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Chapter Thirty One

I sat there on my knees in the Vault of Vulgar Humor, staring at Ichabod in shock. My brain was fizzing and popping so much it felt like someone had spilled soda on a computer inside my skull.

“You…But how…You can't…” I stammered, then looked at Opisthia. “Why is he…He's not…You just…”

Opisthia turned to the other monks, who had watched this all play out in silence, as if it were the latest episode of their favorite soap opera. “Back to work, all of you.”

The monks hurried to obey, filing out through the exit, but not without a few of them muttering something about “freaking cliffhangers.” When it was just me, Ethan, Jade, Opisthia, and Ichabod in the vault, I hesitantly cleared my throat.

“So…I guess it's too much to hope that you're about to arrest him?” I asked, nodding toward Ichabod.

Opisthia shook his cotton-stuffed head. “I'm afraid the one under suspicion at the moment is you, Henry.”

“What?” I exclaimed, springing to my feet. “After everything I just told you—”

“Yes,” Opisthia cut me off. “After everything you just told me.”

“Then why…” I paused, my eyes widening in horror as it dawned on me exactly what he meant.

“You just admitted that you came here with the intention of stealing one of the Brotherhood’s most ancient and sacred relics,” Ichabod said, looking down at me with undisguised contempt. That was one skill Ichabod had completely mastered. You could be standing on top of a skyscraper while he was in the streets, and he would still somehow manage to look down at you. “And as if that weren't enough, you were then planning on handing one of the most powerful weapons in the universe to the enemy.”

I tried to swallow, but my mouth was completely dry. With each passing second, it was becoming a little clearer just how deep the hole I'd dug for myself was. By confessing my crimes, I had sabotaged the mission Blurry had given me, sacrificing my family in the process. But the fact that Ichabod was here—had been here all along—and apparently knew Opisthia so well that the puppet let him shove his arm up…

Actually, let's not go there.

Regardless, Ichabod and Opisthia clearly knew each other. A thousand questions spun through my skull like a tornado, but I knew better than to think these two were in any mood to answer them. What did this mean? Were Opisthia and the Brotherhood of Zanni involved in the laughter farms? They certainly had the manpower for it, and the fact that they had operated for thousands of years in complete secrecy meant they knew how to keep an organization like that far out of the public eye. The more I thought about it, the more sense it…

I locked eyes with Opisthia, and that train of thought died instantly. I had only known Opisthia for a few days, but that was all the time I needed. To say he wore his heart on his sleeve wouldn't have been accurate. He wore his heart on a custom ordered t-shirt with graphics printed in glow in the dark ink on the front and back. There were more things I didn’t understand about him than I could count, but if there was one thing in the world I could say with absolute certainty, it was that he was not, and would never be, involved in the laughter farms.

But Ichabod being part of the Brotherhood was like…I struggled to even think of a fitting metaphor…a chicken inviting a radioactive Colonel Sanders into the coop to babysit her chicks.

This makes no sense! I thought frantically, enough sweat dripping down my forehead to fill a bucket. Why is he here? How is he here? How in the world did you manage this, you fat lump of expired lard?

Opisthia and Ichabod were both silent, content to let me work this out inside my head. They were in no hurry, and I had been considerate enough to make my confession in the most secure room in the universe. I wasn't going anywhere anytime soon.

Or, I thought with my heart sinking into my stomach, probably ever again.

No! There would be plenty of time to feel sorry for myself later. Right now, I needed to figure this out. If I wasn't going to be out there fighting Legion and Ichabod myself, then I needed to make sure that Opisthia and the Brotherhood would do it in my place. That would never happen unless I could convince Opisthia that Ichabod was the bad guy here and now!

So, what did I know? I knew that the laughter farms were out there. That had been proven…and the evidence had been erased when the only one we had been able to find had been destroyed. The Council of Shnoob knew they existed, but Grandpa Teddy was locked away somewhere, Victoria was Legion in disguise, and Ichabod was…well, Ichabod. The only council member who could, and possibly would, back me up on this was Patricia, but that assumed that Opisthia was willing to reveal the Brotherhood's existence to her when they, apparently, already had a member of the council on their payroll. No doubt Ichabod had neglected to even mention the farms to his boss here, so…

I was getting off track. Focus! What were the facts? There had to be something I could use to prove Ichabod's guilt. At the very least, I needed to drive a splinter of doubt into Opisthia’s mind. Just enough to make him want to look into matters himself instead of taking Ichabod's word for it. So, what did I know?

A memory snapped into focus on my brain. I saw myself climbing into a car, followed by Ethan, and finding myself in an office. Sitting behind the desk was Ichabod. He reached into a drawer and produced…

“My grandpa discovered the secret to bottling laughter,” I blurted out as quickly as I could. “Ichabod tried to copy him, but he couldn't figure out how to make it work. He tried to blackmail me into stealing Grandpa Teddy’s plans so he could start selling them himself and drive my grandpa out of business!”

“That much is true,” Ichabod admitted nonchalantly.

I pointed at him. “There, see? He—”

“At least as far as she knows,” he finished, talking right over me.

“But he couldn't figure out how to collect it,” I went on, stubbornly. I had come too far. No matter what happened to me, I couldn't let this arrogant creep talk his way out of his crimes. “So he resorted to using mind control to force them to laugh. But since the laughter wasn't freely given, it came out poisonous.”

“And this,” Ichabod said, sounding bored, “is where she always veers off into insane conspiracy theories.”

“If you have a better explanation, then let's hear it!” Ethan spat. I jumped a little, almost having forgotten he and Jade were there in all the excitement.

Ichabod scowled at him. “You seem to think you're in a position to make demands, boy. Let me do you a favor and make one thing perfectly clear: as Henrietta’s accomplices, you and your girlfriend are in just as much trouble as she is.”

Ethan’s already pale face paled even more. My hand itched to draw Splatsy, but I resisted. As much as I wanted to bash Ichabod's ugly face in right here and now, that would only serve to make the situation much, much worse.

“Leave Ethan and Jade out of this!” I yelled instead. “It was my family that got kidnapped. I decided to steal the hammer. They had nothing to do with any of it!”

“You should have considered that before dragging them into this!”

“No!” I argued, pointing at him again. “You don’t get to accuse them of something they never did! They might have helped me with the Trials, but you gave them permission to do that! After I got the hammer, whatever I did with it would have been my responsibility, and only my responsibility. So do whatever you think you have to do to me, BUT LEAVE THEM OUT OF THIS!”

To my surprise, Opisthia and Ichabod actually seemed taken aback by this. They exchanged a look, and then Opisthia slowly nodded.

“Very well,” he said at last. “Regardless of what you have done, what you just said is correct. Your friends will not be held responsible for your actions.”

I breathed a sigh of relief.

“You, alone,” he concluded ominously, “will be judged and punished here today, Henry Rider.”

“Henry, don’t!” Ethan protested, stepping up beside me. “We knew what we were doing!”

“You don’t have to do this by yourself,” Jade added from my other side.

Reaching out, I pulled both of them into a hug.

“It’s okay, you guys,” I whispered. “But there are some things a Hunter just has to do on their own.”

Then I pushed them away and, before they could protest more, I stepped forward to confront Opisthia and Ichabod.

“I’ll confess my crime and accept my punishment, whatever you decide it should be,” I said, clenching my fists by my side. “But first I want you to do two things for me.”

Opisthia cocked his head in a very “I don’t have eyebrows or I would be raising one right now” kind of way, but didn’t respond.

“First,” I nodded toward Ichabod, “I want him to explain his part in all of this, and why he was harassing my grandpa so much because of it!”

He raised his nose. “You think I’m going to take orders from—”

“You said that I was right as far as I knew,” I interrupted him. Sweet maraschino cherries, it felt good to do that to him for once! “That means there’s another side to all this that I don’t know about. Everything I’ve learned points toward you being behind this. If you’re really innocent, then you shouldn’t have any problem explaining why I’m wrong!”

Ichabod’s face turned as red as his hair, and he opened his mouth to refuse.

“Very well,” said Opisthia.

“What?” Ichabod whirled to glare at Opisthia, and the puppet returned it unflinchingly.

“She is correct that all of the evidence points toward you. From her point of view, there are few other conclusions she could have reached. That does not excuse what she has done, but if it will avoid drawing this out unnecessarily, then I see no harm in putting her mind at ease.” He turned to me. “What is your second request?”

I took a deep breath. “That you won’t just let the matter drop after you…do whatever it is you’re going to do. Even if you don’t believe me, I want you to promise that you’ll investigate this yourself. If you’re as dedicated to protecting humanity as you say you are, then you wouldn’t be able to ignore this even if you wanted to! And when you find out that I’ve been telling the truth, promise me you’ll do something about it. Find out who’s behind all of this, and put a stop to it. You have the entire Brotherhood at your disposal. If anyone can do this, it’s you!”

Opisthia seemed to consider this for a long moment, then nodded. “Very well. Though it strikes me as a tad redundant, I will make this promise. Brother Ichabod, explain to her your part in all of this.”

I blinked in surprise. What did he mean by redundant?

Ichabod frowned. The thought of deferring to someone like me, a lowly Blue, clearly hurt his pride as a Red. For once, though, he wasn’t the highest ranking person in the room, and Opisthia didn’t intend to give him a choice. If I weren't up to my eyeballs in trouble, the sight of him having to take orders from a puppet would have had me on the floor laughing for minutes on end.

Right now, though, it was taking all of my willpower not to burst into tears again.

“Fine,” he spat, the word practically dripping with venom, then pointed at me with his free hand. “But let me disillusion you about one thing right now, Henrietta: you did not discover anything. The Brotherhood of Zanni knew about the laughter farms’ long before you tripped and fell face first into all of this.”

“We did not know the farms existed,” Opisthia interrupted him. “Not until you found the first one. But there were clues that, had we been left to investigate on our own, would eventually have led us to them.”

Ichabod gave Opisthia a dirty look, but continued the story anyway. “There were reports of humans disappearing near unguarded Corners coming in from across dozens of dimensions. Certain…contributing factors…led us to believe that these disappearances may have been of klaonish origin.”

“What factors?” I asked.

“As a public official of significant influence and immeasurable value to society,” he went on, ignoring me, “Opisthia ordered me to uncover what was going on and who was behind it.”

“And so, what?” I demanded, spreading my arms. “While you were out playing James Bond, you decided that robbing my grandpa would be a fun little way to pass the time? Why drag him, of all people, into this mess?”

“You still don’t understand, do you?” Ichabod asked, his lip curling.

“What on Earth gave you that idea? The fact that I keep asking you what the frog legs is going on?”

He sneered down at me in grim satisfaction. “Everything I said about wanting to open my own business to compete with your grandfather was a lie, Henrietta. I never wanted to make my own inhalers.”

I frowned at that. The idea that the Brotherhood suspected the farms existed was less and less surprising the more I thought about it. But why would Ichabod focus so much attention on Grandpa Teddy if he didn’t want to…

My eyes widened—and then suddenly, he was there.

“I think you’ve said quite enough, Ichabod.”

I spun around to find Blurry standing right beside me. Just like the last time I’d seen him, he was nothing but a dark, constantly shifting hole in my vision.

“You!” I exclaimed.

I looked at Blurry, then at Ichabod, then at Blurry, then at Ichabod. Then, just to be safe, I looked at Ichabod and then at Blurry. They stayed right where they were—or, in Blurry’s case, where he wasn’t—and my heart sank into my stomach. They were both here. Ichabod and Blurry. Together. In the same room. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, there was no denying what was right in front of me. And that made one thing completely and utterly undeniable.

Ichabod was not Blurry.

“It seems I overestimated you, Henry,” Blurry said in his weirdly modulated voice, and I got the impression that he had turned to look at me. “I thought the task I had given you was the definition of simplicity, and yet you’ve done nothing but prove your incompetence.”

Looking at him, I felt a fire ignite in my chest. It started small, like a candle flame. All the other emotions crashing around inside me—shame, fear, hopelessness—pressed in on that little flame, doing their best to quench it. But seeing my enemy here, hearing him mock me, thinking about everything that I had gone through over the past three days, caused the fire to burn brighter, burning away those other feelings. It grew larger and larger inside me, every beat of my heart stoking its flames, until there was a raging inferno blazing in my chest.

And I do mean raging.

Without a word, I drew Splatsy, extended her to warhammer form, and—

“Henry, wait!” Opisthia shouted.

Too late. I swung Splatsy over my head, preparing to crush Blurry’s head like a rotten watermelon in one terrible blow. But even as she descended, Blurry raised something. It might have been a cane, but it was impossible to tell.

Splatsy struck the whatever-it-was, and froze in midair as suddenly as if I’d hit her against a mountainside. Then a crack appeared in her wooden head. A dark purple light shone from within it. Another crack appeared, then another, and another, spreading across her, branching into even more cracks, until—

WHOOMPH!

With a sound that I felt more than heard, Splatsy exploded, sending me rocketing backwards until I hit the wall behind me. Pain shot through my skull, and my vision swam. I ignored both, though, and threw myself back to my feet, eyes wide with horror, as tiny wooden splinters rained down all around the room, each one trailing a thin line of smoke. Some were glowing with faint purple light, like embers from an otherworldly campfire. Vaguely, I realized Ethan and Jade had also been thrown across the room. They looked just as stunned as I was, but otherwise unharmed.

But then everything else ceased to matter, because a wooden stick lay on the floor halfway between Blurry and me. A high pitched whine filled the room, and it wasn’t until several seconds later that I realized it was coming from me.

“SPLATSYYYYY!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. I dashed across the room, falling to my knees, and grabbed what remained of her. A thicker plume of smoke rose from where her head had been just a moment ago, filling my nose with a sharp, almost acidic smell.

I started to hyperventilate. No. No! This couldn’t be happening. Not to her. Not to Splatsy! She was my friend. The only one who had been with me during every hunt, every fight. Whenever I had risked my life and stared death straight in the eyes, she had been by my side. My faithful, trusty weapon that had saved my life more times than I could count. She was the physical embodiment of what I was, the symbol of my place as the Hunter, and now she was…she was just…

I looked up at Blurry, who was still standing in front of me as nonchalantly as if we were taking a walk through the park. My vision turned blue as indescribable anger rose up inside me. I raised my hands, my fingers curling into claws.

“I am,” I said, my voice rising with every word, “GOING TO KILL YOU!”

But before I could lunge for him, he spoke, and something about his voice froze me in my tracks.

“No, you’re not,” he said matter-of-factly. “Because in about three seconds, you’re going to be busy. Very busy.”

I blinked. What was he—

There was a deep BOOM, and Jah Beryge shook beneath my feet.

I froze. I knew what Blurry expected me to do here. He wanted me to run and see what had happened. If any of the monks were in danger, he expected me to save them. And the worst part was, he was right. As the Hunter, that was exactly what I should have done. On any other day, it’s what I would have done.

But today was different. Today, standing here, knowing I had already lost everything that had ever mattered to me, I found myself struggling. My whole body shook. Mom…Dad…Grandpa Teddy…and now Splatsy. The one responsible for it all was right here in front of me. It would have been so easy to kill him right here and now, even with a broken hammer.

And I wanted to kill him. I wanted to kill him more than I had ever wanted to kill anything in my life. Somewhere in the back of my mind, this burning need to end his life scared me, but I was beyond caring. Blurry had caused me so much pain in only three days. He deserved to die. And I deserved to be the one to kill him.

“Aren’t you going to go look?” Blurry asked casually.

I began to raise what was left of Splatsy. The least I could do was let her have revenge on—

“Henry!”

I froze, the voice piercing straight through my evil thoughts, and I turned to see Opisthia standing tall and proud on the end of Ichabod’s extended arm.

“Do not let your hatred consume you!” he declared. “Go and do your duty as the Hunter.”

I blinked, my head clearing a little. Shame struck me like a bolt of freezing cold lightning as I thought back to what I had been seconds away from doing. I looked down at the stick in my hands, then at Opisthia.

“But…But what about…” I said, my voice shaking.

“The life of a Hunter does not revolve around killing,” Opisthia said calmly, “but the saving of the innocent.”

The ground shook again, and a scream of pain came from outside. I looked at the door, then down at Splatsy, then at Blurry. The anger roiled inside me again, but…

Then Ethan and Jade were by my side, and I pushed the darkness down. There would be time for that. But not now. Not when I had work to do.

“I’m going to need a weapon,” I said, gently and reverently setting Splatsy’s handle down on the floor.

“I think I can help with that,” Opisthia said.

I looked over just as Ichabod reached for something behind him, and a sharp metallic click echoed through the vault. The floor rumbled again, but this time from something much closer. Ichabod hurried to get out of the way. My eyes widened, my breath catching in my throat, and—

Something exploded out of the little room, throwing the gates open wide with a deafening BANG! A streak of pure light shot through the air like a comet. I could feel the pure, unadulterated power radiating from it. Tentatively, I held my hand out.

The light responded, coming straight to me, and I closed my fist around it.

“HELLO!” it greeted me. “MY NAME IS GEORGE AND I AM A HORSE!”


NEXT CHAPTER 2/4/26