The madman frowned thoughtfully up at the massive computer monitors that made up the back wall of his throne room. The various AIs and algorithms he'd used to search for information about this line of "Elendíl" had only brought back excerpts from a forgotten fairy tale, and turned up nothing about any "Elrohir," "Eldarion," or any such war as "The War of the Heart."
Not for the first time, the madman regretted executing his nephew for incompetence. Whatever his flaws and various half-concealed treacheries, Sniveley had been useful to him, building the great databases that ran their empire, while the madman came up with yet more beautiful machines to oust those rodents.
If nothing else, the madman missed hearing Sniveley compliment his latest creations, even if they were made out of obsequiousness, rather than admiration.
He was just about to dismiss the excerpts as pieces of historical fiction and shut the room down so he could order a well-earned dinner, when the great monitors flickered, made a loud futz, and all the data disappeared.
Replacing the data, was a huge, pixelated gif of the blue rat's twin-tailed tagalong, grinning, shimmying and shaking and thumbing his nose directly at him.
Then hideous, poorly-compressed polka music suddenly filled the room at full volume.
Turn off your computer and make sure it powers down-
The madman snarled. That damned little fox was in his mainframe again! He began typing furiously, hoping to assess the damage done to his system.
Drop it in a forty-three foot hole in the ground!
All the while, the high, crunchily distorted tones of the fox's voice drowned out the string of curses issuing from the madman's lips.
Bury it completely, rocks and boulders should be fine-
"ENOUGH!"
Then burn all the clothes you might've worn anytime YOU WERE ONLINE!
Another futz and the screens went black. The madman roared as he began flipping switches to get them back online. Within thirty seconds, they did.
Sweet, merciful silence. The madman went back to the file he'd labeled "Heart." Nothing. The madman slammed a steel fist on the armrest, cracking several buttons. He began typing.
The screen went black again. "What the-"
Flame-yellow, pixelated text began to crawl across the great screens, ignoring his inputs.
Well met, Lord Ivo Robotnik._
The madman paused. Lord Ivo Robotnik.
His eyes narrowed. Buttnik, Fatman, Egghead, Eggman–none of the so-called "Freedom Fighters" ever addressed him so politely, especially when committing sabotage.
Gradually, a venomous grin curled his lips. A tech-savvy deserter, perhaps? If it were, he'd give the little rat a just reward for disrupting his mainframe like this.
"Who are you?" he asked, allowing the various microphones he'd installed around the throne room to turn his speech into text. Unaccountably, the stale metallic air of the throne room suddenly felt... colder than usual. Much colder.
I am Maedhros, son of Feänór, Slayer of Elrohir._
The madman's brow furrowed. Slayer of Elrohir, indeed. He was being mocked. He knew it.
The madman decided to have a little fun. He activated one of the computers built into his throne, a backup against the near-constant sabotage he experienced these days.
He'd find the point of intrusion, reset the system again, and he'd show this insolent pup what happens when–
The computer died. And when the madman tried the others, he got blue screens. He flipped several breaker switches on his armrest, to perform a hard reset: they didn't respond.
The chill in the air deepened. The madman thought, with no small disbelief: Not even the fox had ever managed that. Something told him that this intruder, whoever it was, was no mere hacker.
Slowly, the madman looked again at the great screen before him.
Your library is incomplete, I fear. You seek information regarding The Heart of the Earth, do you not?_
"What would you know about it, Slayer of Elrohir?" the madman groused.
I can tell you everything. More, if you would help my brothers and I reclaim The Heart of the Earth._
"And why would I do that?"
The leader of your rebels currently possesses The Heart._
The mention of the princess made him pause. For a long time, perhaps months, the madman had not received a single whiff of her whereabouts. Still, he had to ask: "Which leader? What does he look like?"
A child-sized creature, bearing the guise of a rodent, with red hair and blue eyes. Princess Sally Acorn, I believe you name her?_
So, the princess herself had plundered that tomb of ancient humanity. The madman's wrath completely cooled, and his tone became more civil. "I suspected as much. What do I not know?"
The Heart calls to us. Day and night we feel it. Though an enchantment lies upon her domain that beguiles the eyes of Men and your machines, we feel it._
The madman's lips curled into a cruel smile. "Interesting..." He steepled his fingers beneath his chin. Enchantment. Magic. He ran a quick satellite scan of the Great Forest: as ever, nothing. Not one trace of the town, whose name his prisoners often cried out as they were made into his servants.
The madman believed in the superiority of steel and circuitry; nonetheless, he could not deny that there were forces beyond the material. The Power Rings, the Chaos Emeralds, the scrolls of Mahga locked in his vaults were proof enough of that.
"Tell me, what is she doing right now?"
At this very moment?_
"No, last week. Of course now!"
A long, chilly pause.
Just as the madman began to roar a "Well?", a pale, translucent shape emerged from the screen, floating down to the foot of the throne. Tall it was, taller than the madman, with long, black hair, pale flesh, leaf-shaped ears, and clad in battered, ancient red armor. Instead of a right hand, there was a stump; for a left hand, a smoldering, blackened claw.
Imperious, implacable, the figure glared at him.
The madman momentarily blanched. A hologram? No. There was no light on any spectrum that he could trace back to a projector.
A hallucination? No: the biological readings from the sensors that had replaced his eyes, detected no unusual brain activity, nor any trace of any chemical that could cause a hallucination. Not even a gas leak.
He was actually talking to…a spirit. A ghost.
The temperature dropped with the madman's stomach.
Icy, resonant thunder issued from the ghost's lips: "She feasts her court beneath paper lanterns. Three gifts from each lord are now brought before her: one of wine, one of wood, and one of song."
A ghost. A real ghost. The madman blinked as he composed himself, and registered what his visitor had said. Three gifts. Why does that sound so familiar?
He thought. Then it hit him. The Gifts of Princess Brigid.
Long ago, before he'd restored Man and Machine to their place above Vermin, he'd learned an ancient tale of an Acorn princess, who'd gone among the kingdoms of Men and brought back three gifts to her people: a barrel of mead, an ebony wood necklace, and a song of battle.
Very clever, princess, the madman grudged, Deliberately evoking a demigod to promote unity. It was exactly the sort of thing she would do.
So, it wasn't stealth that had protected the princess's army of rodents from thermal and satellite imaging. Tactical cunning hadn't fooled the hunting parties he'd sent into the Great Forest. It hadn't even been some unknown technical backdoor that scrambled their sensors and lost those hunting parties.
A hand invisible had done all of it. Now that the madman knew this… Perhaps I could find a way to break it. But in the meantime, he saw the use in something that could penetrate this "enchantment."
His brow relaxed, and his bristly, mustachioed grin returned. Sleep soundly while you can, princess. One day soon, you will wake up to a supernatural surprise. Then I will surprise you.
He wouldn't trust this "Maedhros", any further than he had to; Maedhros was a threat, one potent enough to shut down his toughest creations. But the madman would bide his time, and play along.
Casually, the madman leaned back in his throne, waved a hand as Elrohir might have to a court messenger. "Go on, Son of Feänór."
Five other pale, translucent shapes, each clad in red armor and maroon capes, appeared beside Maedhros. The implied violence in Maedhros's expression sank away, and turned to something grim, but ultimately professional. Businesslike. "With pleasure, Lord Ivo Robotnik."
At last. He'd done it. This year, Tails had managed to palm a mad cap.
Both Sally and Uncle Chuck had both told him they were dangerous for anyone under the age of seventeen. He was thirteen.
But Tails had done his research: when cut in two, the particular species hidden in his fist would contain just enough psilocybin to give someone of his age, height, and weight some mild visual distortions, an increased heart rate, and most importantly a "restorative euphoria" that would last through the night.
In theory, consuming the mad cap in this manner would cause his weary brain to make millions of new synaptic connections. It would subtly alter how he thought. And after a week of poring over translations and contemplating how the hell it all related to the gem and what Amy saw, he needed a fresh perspective.
It wasn't like Sally would need him to do any translation tonight. And it wasn't like he was drinking, like so many others were. Well...okay, so he'd accepted a shot of honeyshine from Ant, courtesy demanded it. And a few sips of Vector's mead, and a beer from Sonic.
Blocky ochre laptop clutched under his arm and the sticky, honey-baked mad cap in his right hand, Tails slipped away from the crowd to find a quiet spot. He'd only taken the most cursory of glances at the data he'd stolen from Robotnik's mainframe.
Tails began to hum along with the tune Rotor was playing near the bonfire.
If the devil's in the way, then we'll roll it over him
If the devil's in the way, then we'll roll it over him
And we'll all hang on be-hind!
We'll roll the ol' char-i-ot along...
Tails felt his voice growing as he walked along, felt his step bounce with the beat of the music, when he spotted a particularly tall pine with a deep cleft between the roots. Perfect.
We'll roll, the ol', (and we'll roll the ol'), char-i-ot along...
Tails soon sat down with those roots, checked to see if anyone was coming, and then lifted the pilfered, honey-baked fungus to his lips. According to his research, mad caps were most effective when chewed thoroughly.
He bit, finding the mushroom surprisingly tough for its size, and began chewing. The taste was... slightly disappointing. A little bitter, a little buttery, and cloaked in honey that tasted both smoky and floral. Downunda pepper flowers, he mused, Marine must have brought the honey.
As Tails chewed, he reflected. The palantir had been a surprising development: the only reason he'd thought to look in The War of the Ring for answers, was that he'd been reading it after putting Cream to bed with A Rabbit's Tale, its more lighthearted prequel.
It wasn't his first read-through of Frodo's journey to cast Sauron's magic ring into The Mountain of Fire, but his fifth. Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin, were all excellent rabbits, but his favorite character to read of, had always been Aragorn.
Aragorn, son of Arathorn, the Red Wolf Elessar.
Tails had imagined him a thousand times: a towering red wolf with a wise, grim smile and gently paternal grey eyes.
Sonic and Sally had raised him, but Tails knew well that they'd been kids themselves. They'd parented on the fly, in the middle of a guerilla war, and they'd done their best.
But there was a gap in Tails's heart that longed for a father, not just an awesome big brother. A steadying hand in his shoulder. A low murmur of age-won wisdom. The approval of a real adult, not just an older peer.
Tails had never met his biological father. So whenever Tails imagined what he looked like, he saw the same smile, the same eyes he imagined on Aragorn.
Aragorn too had held a palantir. He had the right, and the will, to do so. And with it, the Red Wolf had tricked the Dark Lord into attacking Minas Tirith before he was ready.
Tails finally swallowed. The palantir, combined with Amy's testimony, led him to believe that he was dealing with a more grounded legend.
Nothing as mad as King Branoc Acorn trading an eyeball for perfect knowledge of the past; nothing as whimsical as Chief Dearcán, the first Acorn, chugging a bottomless mug of salty beer and finding out he was actually drinking the ocean, thus creating tides.
This War of the Ring read more like the sagas and epics that came after those legends took root, like the Epic of Fionni Acorn, the sellsword prince who battled Enerjak, god-king of the Echidnas.
Maybe it wasn't only the palantir.
Tails smiled, savoring the last traces of the exotic honey.
How amazing would it be to learn that Aragorn was based on a real lord under the Acorn crown? Perhaps even The Lonely Mountain, Rivendell, and the Mines of Moria had some grounding in real, but lost history?
With his non-sticky hand, Tails opened the laptop, and with a few keystrokes, the file labeled "Heart".
Alright Egghead. Let's see what you laid for me.
The festival that opened The Feast of the Green Decree was marvelous. Each representative of each Freedom Fighter cell brought three gifts–which Sally jokingly referred to as her "taxes"–that were doubly so, and shared gladly with her subjects.
From each set of three, Sally had a favorite. Antoine had brought a case of honeyshine, a stiff, clear spirit that carried notes of winter flowers; Charles had brought her a necklace of ebony wood beads filigreed with gold, in reference to the original story of Princess Brigid Acorn; Vector, a barrel of mangrove flower mead from the far south, that tasted like salted caramel; and Rotor played a funny song called "The Woad-Wearing Woses", which Sonic was presently learning with him.
We're the woses wearing woad and we weave our way through woods
In and out and up-around as woad-wearing woses should...
No longer were the Freedom Fighters a ragtag gang of lost kids. Woses they were now, a true forest warband, straight from the Old Mobian stories. Daubed in blue, indigo, and black, they drank, they danced, they feasted, all around a massive bonfire.
We'll break your toys, we'll detonate some Composition B,
We woses here will kick your ass on air and land and sea...
If only Robotnik lived in a stone castle, with drawbridges, moats, and towers. Sally would have stopped the party right then, and led her woses out to burn the place down.
Arowp-adowp-arowp-adowp-a-dap-a-deep-a-dah...
Instead, she signaled a young porcupine to add more wood to the bonfire. Then she inhaled: pan-fried insects, eggs, mead, crisping fish, fragrant mushrooms, boiled greens, and pine sap. She loved all of it.
Only Nicole was absent from this merry band. She'd been absent for three years. No comm. No emergency signal. Not even a goodbye message. She was just gone.
It was still a wound in Sally's heart, only half-healed. And especially on this day, it stung.
You couldn't drink. You couldn't eat. I know. But you still danced with Sonic. With Tails. With me, Bunnie, Rotor, Ant. You smiled, you laughed.
Had Robotnik captured Nicole? Deleted her? Or was she still operating, in deep cover in Robotropolis? Not even Tails had been able to find a trace.
Unconsciously, Sally's eyes searched the partygoers, half-hoping that Nicole would materialize among them. But no such appearance was forthcoming.
A voice, soft, clear, melodic as a church bell, close in her ear.
Well met, Aranel Calumë.
Sally glanced around. Bunnie and Antoine were to her left at the table, feeding each other toasted mushrooms and laughing. Amy was to her right, picking at her own plate of eggs with a two-pronged fork. No one was behind her. And ahead of her, about two hundred feet on a makeshift wooden stage, was Sonic, Rotor, and…
A deer. A buck. One with brass fur, long, curly golden hair, and pale antlers. Sonic and Rotor were talking animatedly with him. And his woad markings were simple, three dots on his forehead and three on each cheek, arranged in a triangle.
Sonic had told her about his earlier jam session with this stranger. The deer was a beautiful singer, an acrobat on par with Sonic himself. But the strangest thing about him, was that he didn't even recognize Sonic. Everyone knew who Sonic was, even people who had never seen him.
Too obvious, she thought. Too out of place to be a spy. Even a spy would know his name. And a spy would never draw the attention of a crowd like he and Sonic did. She continued to study the deer.
The buck glanced at her, and their eyes met, blue on blue. Youthful, intelligent, yet…time was in them. The kind of time she was used to seeing in a mountain range.
I'm sorry I called you a little fool. Foes were upon you.
She blinked, looked again for the source of the voice. It felt oddly familiar. Wait. Little fool…?
Amy eyed her curiously, as the deer kept talking to Sonic. "What is it?"
Foolish you are not. The light you bear is hidden well.
The gem in her vest warmed.
The light I bear. Sally recognized the voice. Degrath. The dream. The seventh voice. It wasn't a whisper into her ear. It was in her mind.
The deer nodded his chin at her, as he spoke to Sonic. Sonic grinned. Rotor took up his banjo again and started playing with his own Freedom Fighters, and Sonic began leading the deer through the crowd.
Awaken, you little fool. Had she not, the spiders would have ambushed her, Sonic and Bunnie.
Inwardly, Sally shuddered. She didn't know what sort of venom those creatures possessed, but their presence, the Web Wall itself, sickened the trees. Who knew what their venom could do?
"Sal?" Amy asked, laying a hand on Sally's marked arm. "What's wrong?"
She turned to Amy, her voice low enough for only Amy to hear above the music and general chatter: "Find Tails. Meet me with him at his place in fifteen minutes."
Concern slowly knit Amy's eyebrows. "Is this about the surprise?"
"It might be," Sally muttered, more to herself.
"What?"
"Just find him."
Amy visibly bit back her next question, slowly nodded. She understood: it was Sally the Freedom Fighter who'd spoken, not Sal. "Got it. See you there." Amy left.
She turned to Bunnie and Antoine, tapped Bunnie on the shoulder.
Bunnie was grinning when she met Sally's eyes, but the grin faded after a moment. She saw Sally the Freedom Fighter too, as did Ant. "What's up?"
Sally's tone was calm. "I have a new lead on the gem. He's coming to us now, with Sonic." She nodded at Sonic and the stranger. "We're going to meet at the shop, now stand with me."
Bunnie nodded, Ant saluted, as all three of them got to their feet.
Sonic and the stranger finally broke through the throng. "Sal, Sal! This is the guy!" Sonic said with a grin, "Sal, this is Felagund, Felagund, Sal." He slapped the stranger on the back, unconsciously bouncing a bit to the ongoing music. "He's from Lonely Island, wherever that is."
Wherever that is. Her geography was rusty, but she recalled no island on the shores of the Acorn Kingdom that went by that name.
Felagund bowed. "Charmed, my Lady of Acorn." His smile broadened. "Your consort is quite a man, though he speaks more highly of yourself."
Sally stood, bowed back. Who are you? "The pleasure is mine, Mr. Felagund. You wanted to speak with me in private?"
Sonic's ears flicked in confusion. "Wait. You've met?"
Tails stared into his blocky ochre laptop, jaw dropped. He didn't yet know what sort of linguistic algorithms Robotnik had used, but they absolutely would be the finest at his disposal.
Carefully translated off the sarcophagus in the tomb Sally and Bunnie had raided, were these words:
Here lies Elrohir, son of Eldarion, Lord of Minas Ithil.
"Minas Ithil," he whispered. The screen shimmered slightly.
It meant "The Tower of the Moon." But it also went by another name, in The Red Book of Westmarch.
"Minas Morgul." His eyes widened. Each piece of black text on the white digital document sharpened, then... slightly displaced. The sound of the festival nearby, all the pipes, banjos, guitars, fiddles, and drums became a dull roar.
The Tower of Sorcery. Fortress of corpse light.
At first he'd thought it was a red herring, something to throw off intruders and make them run in circles for more information. But Robotnik, for all his mechanical genius, did not have the patience, nor the interest in literature to fake something like this so thoroughly.
"The palantir. Denethor's death." His left eye twitched.
At first, he rationalized it. The writer of the story must have used a piece of lost history to inform his narrative, when writing The War of the Ring. The rest was made up, it had to be! But Minas Ithil? The Minas Ithil?
Dawn broke again in his mind. A soft electric current ran through his fingers, into his heart, his stomach, down to his toes and to the tips of his tails. "The sword."
For days, he'd poured over the translation of the runes that adorned that blade. And Tails now realized that his rendering of Elainn-dilo and Andooreel from the runes was incorrect: it was Elendílo, and Anduríl.
Then there was Elrohir himself, and his father Eldarion. More translated inscriptions in the surrounding tomb traced the dead king's lineage back to... Aragorn, son of Arathorn. And from them, all the way back to Elendíl. King Elendíl. Of Numenór.
If Tails took everything at face value here, he had spent an entire week in the presence of Anduríl, who was Narsíl, the Sword of Elendíl.
The same blade that had cut the One Ring from the hand of Sauron. The Sauron. The Dark Lord of Mordor, whose eye had searched out Frodo, Aragorn, Gandalf…
Amy saw a human in the palantir. The skeleton in the sarcophagus was human. But everyone in The Red Book is Mobian.
Did the Mobian author simply adapt an existing story? A human story?
His breathing hitched. The current intensified.
It was a rabbit who found the One Ring, like Vanilla and Cream?
Wasn't it?
Aragorn was a king from the Dunedaín wolves, Gandalf a moose, Gimli and Thorin Oakenshield badgers, Legolas and Galadriel–
His heart hammered, blood roaring in his ears.
No.
One by one, his beloved Fellowship of the Ring, the childhood heroes who reminded him so much of his real friends, crumbled to dust. Frodo. Stout Samwise. Merry, Pippin. Gandalf, Legolas, Gimli, poor Boromir!
And last of all was his favorite. King Aragorn, the Red Wolf Elessar, who dared Moria twice, stormed the bridge at Helm's Deep, trekked The Paths of the Dead, led a doomed battle at The Black Gate itself!
No.
Aragorn, son of Arathorn, at the Black Gate, raising his blade to pronouce Doom upon The Dark Lord. His ears faded, limbs doubling in length.
"No." Tails did not realize that he'd spoken.
Amy's voice, far, far away: "Tails?"
Aragorn, King of Gondor, his chin held high as he summoned the Oathbreakers to the Stone of Erech.
"Tails, hello?" Amy waved a hand in front of his face.
All of Aragorn's red fur fell out, leaving behind a pale muzzle. Like he'd contracted mange.
"No. No, no, no, NO, Aragorn doesn't get mange!"
Aragorn, Ranger of the North, lounging at a corner table at The Prancing Pony, with hood cast over his eyes. He puffed at a long pipe with that naked, mangy muzzle. One more puff, and the muzzle instantly shortened, shortened, then collapsed into the shadow of the hood.
Then a long, red, prickly mustache sprouted from the shadow. Twin points of red light, where grey once twinkled.
The hood faded. And in the place of the Red Wolf Elessar, grinned the face of the human Tails knew most: Doctor Ivo Robotnik.
"NO!"
"Tails!" Amy's voice finally broke through to him.
Tails jerked to look at her, so fast that he almost gave himself whiplash.
Amy flinched back a bit, then drew closer again to take one of his trembling She was kneeling beside him, very, very close. Had Tails been sober, he might have blushed.
His voice came out a numb croak as he fought through the haze of psilocybin, breath ragged as an old sock. "Uh-huh?"
"Tails, are you okay?" She checked his pulse, then took his other hand in hers. The fingers of his right hand still carried a trace of honey, and she reflexively wiped her newly-sticky hand on the tree Tails now slumped against. "How many mad caps did you just eat?"
"Only glimpsed..." Still reeling, Tails put both hands to his head, as if to keep the top of his skull from shooting off into space. His eyes went again to the terrible document onscreen. "It can't be. No. Aragorn. No."
Bewildered, exasperated, she looked into the laptop, then back at him. Attempting to bring him back to reality, she gripped his shoulders. "What did you see? Who the hell is Aragorn?"
Only one coherent thought came to him.
The gem. Heart of the Earth? No mention of...
Tails shot to his feet, eyes wide as dinner plates, his namesakes bushy with excitement. "Where's Sally?"