Chapter 1

On a quaint little planet, on a quaint little island, stood a quaint little house. Now at first glance, this house would seem perfectly average, two stories, with blue siding. And that would be correct, the house was perfectly average. It was the boy who lived in the house that was special. He was the chosen one, the boy who was destined to save the galaxy.

It happened on this day that the front door opened, and a thwap could be heard, followed by a furry ball of a creature tumbling through the air and bouncing into the street. The boy in question poked his head out of the doorway. “And stay out!” he shouted, shaking his tennis racket. The creature uncurled its stubby little legs and waddled away.

The boy, who looked about fifteen by human reckoning, closed the door and shook his head. “Another grumpoy in the house,” he said. “What is this town coming to?” First, the forest-dwelling creatures had started attacking travelers and people who wandered into the woods. That had been rather amusing, since grumpoys had no claws, and although they had large, strong mouths, they did not use their teeth on living flesh. But there were other animals that were dangerous, such as the nocturnal predators, and those had started ambling about during the day. No one had gotten hurt so far, but the sight of the black and gray wavy patterns of their fur and their snarling mouths full of sharp teeth around the edge of Cackorey village kept more people indoors than usual. Then, some of the grumpoys had lost their fear of yumans, and started showing up inside the village, and eventually, inside people’s houses. No one knew how they got in, but every so often the townsfolk would wake to a munching sound coming from their kitchens, and angrily walk down the hall to find one of the furballs chomping away at their cereal or bread. Luckily, the critters hadn’t figured out how to open refrigerator doors.

The boy hung his tennis racket on its designated hook on the wall, and turned to clean up the mess the grumpoy had made. Luckily, it had only gotten into a box of crackers, so there was not much to throw away.

He made himself breakfast, and then grabbed a pack of tennis balls, ready to go practice. But as he approached the door, the phone rang. He set down the tennis balls and picked it up. “Conner speaking,” he said.

“Hi Conner, it’s Oliver,” came the reply. He sounded excited. “Can you come over to my lab today? I’ve just made a big discovery, and I want to show you everything. You’re going to love this.”

“Sure thing,” Conner said. He had nothing planned for the day, so he might as well spend it with his best friend. “I’ll start heading over right now.”

He packed a sandwich and some snacks, and tucked his tennis racket into its holder on the side of his backpack. If any beasts attacked him on the way, he would have something to defend himself with.

He left his house, making sure to lock it, and headed down the street toward the forest. Oliver lived in Daylight City, on the largest island, across the strait from Cackorey, so it would take a short trek to reach. As Conner entered the forest and stepped onto the well-worn footpath, he wished for the four hundred and sixty-seventh time that someone would build a proper road through these woods.

As he went, he kept an eye out for creatures that might attack him. That was how he dodged the speeding form of a munkee swinging down from one of the trees on a vine. As the two-foot bipedal creature landed, Conner patted his backpack to make sure it hadn’t opened any of the zippers and snatched any of his gear. Luckily, nothing was out of place.

The munkee grinned and put its hands next to its face, wiggling its tongue at him. Conner grabbed his tennis racket, ready to clobber it if it got near. With his attention so focused on this one munkee, he almost missed the whistling sound behind him. In a rush, he leaped into the underbrush by the side of the path, narrowly evading the three other munkees swinging by. He rolled to his feet and ran, knowing that the creatures would not hesitate to chase after him.

Tearing through the woods, followed by the hoots and screeches of the munkees, Conner found himself wishing for the old times, when munkees and the rest of the creatures would leave yumans alone. He had been taught a saying growing up, that, “they are more afraid of you than you are of them.” But that no longer seemed to be true. Something had changed.

He burst through the edge of the woods onto the beach. Across a mile of water lay the mainland, connected to Cackorey Island by a bridge. Conner dashed up the beach, the gaggle of munkees spilling out of the forest behind him. He didn’t look back to count, but from the sound of it, there were seven or eight by now.

The bridge had been built with the latest gravitic technology. Unfortunately, the builders had not had been very good at advanced physics, and their calculations had resulted in the bridge hovering four feet in the air. By then, it had been time for supper, and they had never gotten around to fixing it.

When Conner got to the bridge, he leaped, pushing down on it with his hands for an extra boost. He turned around and faced the munkees, brandishing his tennis racket. They could, of course, climb onto the bridge, but they couldn’t surround him, and he had the high ground and the only weapon.

He swung the racket, and the nearest munkee hopped out of the way. As he backed up, the munkees began to climb onto the edge of the bridge. Whenever they got close, he would swing the racket, and they would jump out of the way. One of them missed its footing and fell into the water with a sploosh, surfacing and spouting angrily in munkee-speak.

That gave Conner an idea. If he could knock the munkees into the water, they would have to swim back to shore before they could chase him again. When the next munkee charged him, he aimed his racket to the munkee’s side. The munkee jumped to the left, right off the bridge. Conner grinned, swinging here and there, munkees tumbling into the water left and right.

The first of the munkees reached the shore and looked back at Conner, as its friends dragged themselves out of the water around it. By this time he had put some distance between himself and the shore, and the munkees slunk away, apparently deeming it not worth it to run all the way back to him only to end up in the water again.

Turning his back to Cackorey Island, Conner made the long walk across the hovering walkway to Daylight city. At least the middle of the bridge had railings, so he would not accidentally fall in and have to swim half a mile.

Daylight city was a bustling place, beneath the watchful presence of Mt. Gogh. It was called a city instead of a village, because it was bigger and denser than all of the villages, and had some buildings that were three stories tall instead of two. It was also where the Arguen Islands’ Capitol building was, which was the fancy name for the building where all of the people who were allowed to be in charge made important decisions like how much to pay the bridge workers, and how much to adjust that amount after the job was done.

“Hey kid,” a shout came from nearby, making Conner jump. “Stay away from my yard, you hear me?”

The girl was poking her head out her door, a look of rage on her face. Conner gave the house a wide berth, wondering what her problem was. He also wondered how she knew he was a kid. Unlike humans, yumans stopped maturing when they turned sixteen or so, remaining the equivalent of a human teenager in body and mind. Conner was only fourteen, but he was sure he could pass as an adult.

Conner continued on his way, navigating the familiar streets on the route to Oliver’s lab. Some might have called it his house, because that was where he slept and kept all of his personal stuff, but most of it was packed with scientific equipment. Conner saw it in the distance, the tallest building around, with its domed observatory on top. That observatory did not have a telescope in it. Instead, he had upgraded and moved the telescope to another observatory on stilts, higher up. A staircase led between them from the hatch where the telescope used to peer out from the old observatory.

Conner went in the front door without knocking, because that’s what best friends do. On the other side, a giant mechanical tower dominated the room, with appendages and tools sticking out at odd angles.

Oliver poked his head in from another room, his characteristic oval glasses making his eyes appear to bug out. “Hi Conner.”

“What’s this do?” Conner said, gesturing to the monstrous machine. “One of your weird experiments?”

“That?” Oliver said. “Oh, no that makes scrambled eggs.”

Conner looked at all the strange devices attached to its arms. “All this, just to make scrambled eggs?”

“No,” Oliver replied, “it also makes strawberry pancakes with maple syrup. Anyway, come upstairs, there’s something I want to show you.”

Conner followed Oliver through what would probably be a living room in a normal person’s house, and up the stairs. Every room was full of devices and gizmos whose purpose Conner could only guess at. There were metal boxes, tubes and pipes, glass bulbs, wires, computers, and every kind of measuring device. Oliver sat down in front of a computer, and moved a stack of giant books off another chair. In their titles, Conner saw words like “Quantum,” and “Hyperspace,” and “Magneto-something-or-other.”

“Look,” Oliver said, pointing to the screen as Conner sat. The browser was open to a local stellar neighborhood news site. Oliver continued. “The strange aggression we’re seeing in the animals isn’t just on the Arguen Islands. It’s happening all over the galaxy.”

“That’s kind of disturbing,” Conner said.

“And what’s more,” Oliver continued, “it’s not just animals. People are getting angry and irrational as well.”

“I see,” Conner said. That explained why the girl had yelled at him on the way here. Either that, or she had missed breakfast.

“Do you have any idea what this means?” Oliver said.

Conner shook his head.

“It means something big is happening. Something that is affecting all of civilization.”

Oliver’s grin suggested he had something more to say. “And?” Conner asked, taking the bait.

“And this!” Oliver reached over to a bookshelf, pulling out a piece of paper. On it was a photocopy of what looked like a poem. It read,

In times of trial, heroes will arise

Seeking the seven medallions of the skies

Migrandir, the subtle stream

Cleanses life and soothes the dream

Irial, the shard of ice

Stops the anger, chills it thrice

Loriah, the gale of air

Can carry heroes anywhere

Chakrov, lightning power

Electrifies the virtual tower

Aepoch, the hand of time

Backward goes it unconfined

Wintermuse, of brilliant light

Tames the world with gentle might

And last, Myrandah, art of fire

Raise the flames ever higher

Gathered, these seven, in heroes’ hands

Shall wipe the scourge from all the lands

“Now you might be wondering,” Oliver said, “why would a man of science such as myself take an ancient prophecy seriously?”

In actuality, Conner had not had any idea why Oliver was showing him all this. Oliver had a tendency to get all excited about strange things that Conner didn’t understand, and today was pretty much par for the course. Now that he knew Oliver was taking it seriously, it didn’t make much of a difference. Conner had grown up with weird Oliver as a playmate, and nothing he did could really surprise him. “I was thinking more about how bad of a poem it is,” Conner replied.

“Yes, well,” Oliver cleared his throat. “It’s a translation. Anyway, I do believe it is true, and for multiple reasons. At first, it was just out of curiosity, an interest in Raquon mythology. But then things started making too much sense. There was so much connection between different texts, and with stuff happening today. Now I know this sounds like a conspiracy theory, and most of the time I treated it like one. You know, pretending to believe just for fun. But then, I found something.” He leaned in toward Conner, grinning.

Conner, who had zoned out, suddenly realized Oliver was waiting for him to say something, and he had no idea what Oliver had been talking about. He stared stupidly at Oliver for a few seconds, and then said, “Okay.”

Oliver frowned. “Don’t you want to know what I found?”

“Yes, yes!” Conner said. So that was what Oliver had wanted him to say. Oliver seemed content, and went right back to where he left off.

“I found out where one of the medallions is!” He tapped the page. “Migrandir, the water medallion.”

“So where is it?” Conner asked, supposing that was what Oliver expected him to say.

“I knew that would interest you,” Oliver said. “It is . . . here!” He jabbed his finger onto a map of the local galactic neighborhood, pointing directly toward Moebius. “Specifically,” He grabbed a Moebian globe and started turning it by walking his fingers over its surface. “Right here!” His hand stopped in the middle of the Argulan Ocean.

“But that’s where we are,” Conner said.

Oliver grinned. “Exactly. The water medallion is inside a cave in our very own Mt. Gogh.”

“Really? No way.” Conner pointed a finger at his friend. “If it were there, surely someone would have found it by now. Almost everyone goes exploring outside of town every now and then.”

“Except the medallion is hidden in a place no one would look. Behind a waterfall!”

“What?” Conner exclaimed. “But if anyone has played a video game, they know that there are always secrets behind waterfalls!”

“Sure, but would you think to do that in real life? I mean, you would get wet.”

That did seem like a reasonable deterrent. “But still,” Conner said, “You would think someone might have stumbled across it while fooling around.”

“There’s only one way to find out,” Oliver said, grabbing a backpack that was stuffed to bursting from the floor.

“Hey,” Conner said, “isn’t that the pack you were going to attach collapsible helicopter blades to so you could fly?”

“Yeah, well,” Oliver said sheepishly, “I kind of underestimated how big the propeller would need to be, and it didn’t fit into the backpack. But the pack is waterproof, so it is the perfect thing for the search for the water medallion.”

They went downstairs, and Conner grabbed his own backpack, adding a couple of things for the trip at Oliver’s suggestion. Outside, they tossed their packs in the rack on the back of Oliver’s four-wheeler.

“I want to drive,” Conner said, hopping onto the vehicle and grabbing the handle bars.

“No,” Oliver said. “You’ll just do donuts in my neighbor’s yard or something stupid like that.”

“Come on,” Conner whined. “I promise I’ll wait until we’re out of town before doing the donuts.”

“No, no.” Oliver pushed Conner, who dramatically flopped out of the seat onto his side on the ground. Oliver took his place, rolling his eyes. “Come on, get on.”

“Okay,” Conner said, pretending to be sad. He got on behind Oliver, and they took off down the road.

Oliver took the four-wheeler out of the city and toward Mt. Gogh. It was said that the mountain had been a volcano once, thousands of years ago, and that was how the islands had come to be. But that was long ago, and the experts said it had become permanently inactive. Probably.

They drove up the dirt road that went to the mountain park, where people went camping a lot on clear summer nights. There was a public observatory at the top, open to anyone who wanted to see the stars or other planets and moons in Moebius’s solar system. Oliver went up there sometimes, but having to wait in line and not having complete control over what he looked at kept him at his home observatory most of the time. He had petitioned the Governing Council to let him build another observatory on the mountain for himself, but they hadn’t understood why one wasn’t enough, and wouldn’t listen when he tried to explain his reasoning.

They stopped at a gravel parking lot. Picking up their packs, Conner followed Oliver down one of the paths that wound up and around. The mountain was not a straight slope, but had its steep parts and its shallow parts.

Before long, they left the path, rounding rocks and cliffs, and came to a small pond. Water left it by a stream on the mountain’s down-side, and entered it by a thick waterfall from above. “There it is!” Oliver said, pointing.

“I don’t see anything,” Conner said, looking at the falling water.

“Of course not. It’s totally hidden!” Oliver took a few steps, and jumped, cannonballing into the pond, splashing all the way back up to Conner on the rocks. Oliver surfaced and paddled toward the wall next to the waterfall.

“Your aim is a little off,” Conner said, pointing a few degrees to Oliver’s side. “It’s over there.”

“You don’t want to swim directly under a waterfall, silly,” Oliver said, grabbing onto a handhold in the wall. “Waterfalls create a turbulent undertow.”

“Which means?”

“Which means,” Oliver said, “it will pull you under water and tumble you about.”

“I guess that makes sense.” Conner jumped in too, and swam to the same wall that Oliver was crawling along. A few handholds later, Oliver disappeared under the waterfall’s heavy shower, and for a moment, Conner wondered if the tumbulent underthrow had gotten him. Then, Conner was under the waterfall, the loud noise and pressure and wetness filling his senses. But he held on to the rock, and kept going, and then the deluge was behind him. He shook his head to clear his eyes, and opened them to see Oliver sitting on a ledge, with a flashlight in his hand.

They were in a tunnel that led gently upward into the mountain, carrying a stream down its middle. Conner crawled up onto the ledge after Oliver and got out his own flashlight. “It looks like you were right about the secret behind the waterfall, at least,” he said.

“The medallion has got to be in here somewhere. I have good reason to believe it.”

“Don’t you mean, ‘I just know it’?”

“No, silly, ‘just knowing it’ is for people who don’t have a good knowledge of science. Learned people have good reasons for believing things.”

“Oh, so what’s your good reason?” Conner asked, shining his flashlight in Oliver’s face.”

“My reason?” Oliver said. “By cross-referencing ancient texts with modern archaeological studies, as well as taking into account a considerable number of things that are too convenient to be coincidental, I have been able to narrow down---”

“So in other words you just have a really good feeling about it,” Conner interrupted.

“Well no,” Oliver stammered. “It’s like, you wouldn’t understand.”

“Sure.”

Some time down the tunnel, the way was blocked by a stone wall, the water flowing through a grate beneath it, and a door in the path.

“See?” Oliver said, excited. “Proof that this tunnel is artificial.”

“It certainly does seem more reasonable now,” Conner admitted.

Oliver tried the door handle. It wouldn’t budge.

“Great,” Conner said, “what do we do now?”

“Never fear,” Oliver replied, putting his backpack on the ground and unzipping it. “I’ll just get my handy lock picking set.”

Conner didn’t hear him, as his attention was taken by the trio of hand-sized spiders crawling down the wall toward them. “Uh, Oliver,” he said, “they don’t look too happy to see us.”

Oliver looked up, and then screeched, knocking his backpack over. Luckily, nothing fell out, and he grabbed it, holding it closed, and jumped backward, nearly knocking Conner off his feet. The two of them slowly backed away from the spiders. “Uh, let’s retreat for now.”

“I’m down for that,” Conner said, and the two of them turned and ran. But not far, because two more spiders appeared from the other direction. “Uh, what do we do?”

“Step on them!” Oliver shouted, hopping up into an opening in the wall that was not tall enough to stand up in.

“What, and get guts all over my shoes?” Conner said. “You step on them!”

“Sorry, my feet can’t reach,” Oliver said. His voice was muted, and Conner looked quickly to find that he had retreated completely into the opening.

“Gosh darn it, Oliver, are you going to help?”

“Oh wait, what’s this?” Oliver’s head emerged, and he held out a large golden key as long as his hand and fingers. As he did so, the spiders stopped advancing, and turned and scurried away. “Well,” Oliver said, watching the critters go. “That was convenient.”

“Why would spiders be afraid of a key?” Conner asked, as Oliver hopped back down.

“Maybe it is made of something that is toxic to them,” Oliver said.

“Uh,” Conner said, looking at the key as if it were a rotten tomato, “are you sure you want to touch it, then?”

“It was just a guess,” Oliver said, shrugging. “Anyway, now that we have the key, we can get going again.”

They went back up the tunnel to the door, a little more cautiously this time. With its overly large keyhole, Conner knew the key would fit before Oliver had even put it in. In a few clunky motions, the door was open, and they stepped through.

The tunnel opened up to a cavern on the other side. The stream split into a bunch of little rivulets all coming together and feeding the stream branches, like a tree. A flattened water tree.

In the center of the upward sloping room stood a stone pedestal, which was too high for Conner to see the top of. They walked toward it. Conner realized he was stepping on the dry parts of the ground instead of the water, and wondered why. He was already soaking wet from the swim in the pond, and these rivulets were only a few inches deep. After one step in the water, however, he realized that there was a completely different reason to avoid it, and that was because it was easier to step only on the high parts of the ground than to go between the uneven heights.

Oliver, who was several steps in front of him, let out a whoop. “Yes!”

“What is it?” Conner said, as he caught up. Then he saw. On top of the pedestal lay an indigo disk, shining in the light from their flashlights. It was half an inch thick, and about the size of the palm of his hand. In its center was emblazoned three wavy lines.

Oliver picked it up, staring at it with wide eyes. It was as if his eyeballs were attached to the medallion by invisible glue. “So it really does exist,” he said, almost whispering. Then he jumped, as if remembering Conner was there too, and said, “I mean, I knew it was here all along. My confidence in that fact never wavered.”

“Do you hear that?” Conner asked.

“What?” Oliver asked.

“That faint rumbling sound. Listen, it’s getting louder.”

As its volume rose, the ground started to shake, and Conner and Oliver held their hands out for balance, looking around to see what was happening. The water around their feet started to churn.

“I think we should run,” Conner said.

“Agreed,” Oliver replied.

They dashed back into the tunnel, but before they could get very far, the rumble turned into a roar, and a flood of water crashed into them from the back, picking them up and tumbling them onward. Conner couldn’t tell where he was, but within moments everything got bright again, so he knew they must have been thrust out into the daylight.

Then, he was falling, and he opened his eyes to find that the force of the river had pushed him past the pond to where the stream after it flowed down the mountain. He was hurtling straight for a boulder, one that looked really, really hard.

There was a swirl in front of his vision, and then he came to a halt with a splash. He had landed in water somehow, but he could still see the mountain sloping away in front of him. He landed gently, and then the water around him fell away, slipping down the mountain. When his wits returned, he found himself lying on his stomach, arms hugging the rock, wet, but unhurt.

“Just as I expected,” Oliver said. Conner looked to find him standing nearby, tossing the blue disk in his hand. “The medallion gives the one who holds it power over water.” He caught it and looked at it. “Though I think it’s limited. I wanted to catch us both in midair, but I couldn’t. It felt like the water was getting really heavy. So I set us down before I lost control.”

“Well,” Conner said, shivering. “Thanks for that.”

“Do you know what this means?” Oliver said, holding the blue medallion toward Conner. “This means the rest of them are real too! Back to the four-wheeler! Back to my house! Clear your schedule, because we have a quest!”