Chapter 9
The Thief's Night
The Giant was hunched over in the kitchen and just finished a whole plastic crate of food bars. He was about to leave when he spotted a human man at the doorway staring back at him. To the Giant, the human looked like a fish out of water the way his mouth hung open. A soft, long croaking noise came out of his throat.
Blast! Thought the Giant. I've let myself be seen my another human. And this time, it's an adult!
That was the first thing to cross his mind. But then his eyes turned to the object in the human's left hand.
Wait a minute. Is that . . . ? "The Pearl!"
The Thief was snapped out of his stupor by the Giant's cry and he screamed, "AAAAAAAAAAH!"
"Huh? Wait!" The Giant shouted, but the Thief did not listen. He turned tail and ran out of the house as fast as he could, taking the Pearl of Fate with him. The Giant chased after the Thief, never minding the damage he caused to the walls and ceiling.
Once out the gateway, the Thief turned left and screamed, "There really is a giant!"
Said Giant jumped over the high wall and bolted after the Thief down the road.
Round and round they ran, going left, right, right, left, right and right, left and left. The Giant got close, arms spread to catch the Thief as he loomed over the small human yet never finding the chance. Overhead, darkness was cast over the Ghost Quarter while the clouds above were tinged a fiery, reddish hue of late afternoon.
"Hee! Hoo! Hee! Hoo! Hee! Hoo!" The Thief wheezed in and out. Sweat poured down the sides of his head like a waterfall and his guts felt like they were going to tear apart. He had never run so far and so fast before in his entire life.
I can't keep this up! He thought, daring to take a quick look back over his shoulder. The Giant was right on top of him, nose flaring. His face looked almost like a dragon's whose eyes stared straight ahead.
Whether he tired out first or the Giant catches up first, either way, it was just a matter of time before the Thief was caught.
But just when things were looking bleak, he spotted a very thin gap between two buildings and was struck with an idea.
"One last push!" With a sudden burst of speed, the Thief dove into the opening.
At that moment, the Giant reached out and tried to grab the Thief, but it was too late. Not even half his hand could feet into the gap and all he could do was watch as the Thief, along with the Pearl of Fate, became a speck in the darkening distance.
"Blast!" Frustrated, the Giant stamped his foot, making a dent on the pavement. He did not notice the bird crossing the sky over his head.
**********
It was a tight squeeze between the two houses, but the Thief made it to the other side no problem by crab-walking along the path while both the front and back of his shirt scraped against rough stone. After popping out of the gap, he stumbled and then stopped, panting for air.
"I should be safe now, right?" he wondered aloud. "He can't reach me here, can he?"
He turned around to look back, but nighttime had quickly fallen and he could no longer see a thing. Everything around him was just pitch black.
Unable to stand the darkness for long, he pulled out his smartphone and turned on its flashlight to look around. He found himself in a concrete square boxed in at all four sides, except for a sizeable gap at the furthest corner away. Near the Thief's side was an indentation in the floor with a faucet shaped kind of like a Christmas candy-cane. Possibly in the past, people used to come here to collect water, but clearly not anymore now.
Out of the edge of the light's shine, the Thief spotted the back end of a large cockroach before it scurried away. A shiver ran down his spine, and not from the night chill (There wasn't even one as around this time of year, the night was as sweltering as the day).
"I need to find someplace to crash," he grumbled to himself. "Somewhere indoors, hopefully with no bugs."
A sigh escaped his lips when he realized the depressing fact that any house he found to spend the night would be full of bugs. They'd be abandoned, after all.
But before he even had a chance to find another house to replace the one that apparently had a Giant living in it now, this happened:
Just as he was about to leave the square through the wider gap, someone stepped into view and blocked the way out. This person had his own source of light, a ball of fire floating above his held-out hand like a spirit ball.
As soon as he saw the person's face, the Thief's blood ran cold. Standing before him was none other than the Wealthy Son.
The Thief turned to flee back the narrower gap, but that exit was also blocked off when a woman suddenly dropped down from the sky with a graceful landing. It was the Secretary.
"Now then," said the Wealthy Son, "it's time you gave back what belongs to me."
The Secretary didn't bother to correct the Wealthy Son that the pearl actually belonged to his father. She kept her eyes laser-focused on the Thief so he couldn't get away.
Turning his gaze from the Secretary to the Wealthy Son, the Thief held his hands up, one clasping the pearl, and said, "Sure, sure. I know when I'm beat."
He tried to keep cool, but his voice trembled, exposing his nervousness and fear.
"But mind telling me one thing first?" He asked. "What's so great about this pearl? Sure, it's pretty looking. Probably worth a lot of money. But I've been getting the feeling lately that there's more to it than that."
"He's stalling for time," said the Secretary. "Likely looking for a chance to escape."
"Pfft!" The Wealthy Son scoffed. "Fat chance! I've placed a force field around us, closing off any and all exits. There is no escape."
"Oh, come on," the Thief whined in dismay. "That's just cheating!"
Force fields sounded extremely outlandish to him. But then again, the guy who claimed to put one up was right now holding fire with his bare hands, which was, itself, a pretty outlandish thing to see.
"A tricky Thief like you has no right to complain about what's fair or not," snapped the Wealthy Son. "But I guess I can at least tell you a little bit about that pearl. It is an ancient object with magical powers that's been a big help to my family for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years."
"So this thing's where you got those superpowers from?"
At the Thief's question, the Wealthy Son guffawed. "If you're thinking to use that pearl to transform into some kind of mystic wushu warrior, think again. There's no way the likes of you with absolutely no training in the magic arts can ever hope to unlock its powers."
"Hey, you never know," said the Thief. Meanwhile, to the pearl, he silently urged, Come on! Gimme something here. Anything to get me out of this mess!
"Ha!" The Wealthy Son scoffed again. "I'd like to see you try."
"I don't think it's a good idea to let him," said the Secretary. "We should take him down now while we still have the chance."
Seriously, come on! The Thief mentally screamed at the pearl. Oh? Wait, did it just flash? It's not a trick of the light from my phone, is it?
He thought he saw the pearl shine and it got his hopes up.
It did! It did flash, he thought.
"Oh, very well," the Wealthy Son replied to the Secretary with a sigh. "Sorry, Thief, but I'm afraid it's time to say good-bye. I'd like to also say that it's been a pleasure talking with you, but then I'd be lying."
Bravely, the Thief puffed his chest out and said, "Yeah? Well you're no fun to be around either!"
Believing he was granted magic superpowers, the Thief pointed the pearl at the Wealthy Son and screamed, "Eat magic laser, scumbag!"
One second . . . Two seconds . . . Three seconds . . .
Nothing happened.
"I said, eat magic laser!"
That yell didn't do anything either.
"Are you done now?" asked the Wealthy Son.
"Wait, hold on!" said the Thief. "I think I almost got it!"
But the Wealthy Son said, "Yeah, I don't think so. And even if you could get that thing to work, there's no way I'll give you the chance to."
He raised his hands over his head and the fireball grew a hundred times bigger. And with that explosive growth was a burst of heat that stung the Thief's face and made him shrink away with an, "Eek!"
"Time to turn you to ashes!"
With nothing more he could do, the Thief raised his arms over his face and prayed to Heaven for a miracle.
The Wealthy Son pulled the ginormous ball of fire further back over his head, ready to hurl it at the Thief. But just before he could fling the definitely deadly inferno -
"Lux caecans!"
A woman's voice rang out, speaking words that the Thief had never heard before, not even from movies from other countries.
The Wealthy Son turned with a start and then both he and the Secretary cried out in pain and surprise as the whole world around them was blanketed by white light. Above the Wealthy Son's head, the fireball exploded with a force that swept him off his feet and sent him rolling to the side.
Because he shut his eyes tight, the Thief had no idea what was going on. But then he felt something tug on the pearl and a familiar voice shout, "Mine!" It gave him a sense of deja vu. He opened his eyes and was surprised to see the Hypnotist pulling him along.
She came to rescue me? At first, the Thief was touched by this gesture of goodwill. But when he lowered his gaze to the pearl, he realized, Nope. She was really only after the pearl and just accidentally dragged him along. Typical thief.
Not that the Thief was one to talk.
After running around the abandoned neighborhood for a while, the Hypnotist pulled the Thief into an abandoned property with an open gateway and slammed the steel door shut. When she turned around, she cried out in surprise. "Hey! Let go!"
"Not a chance!" the Thief snapped back.
The Hypnotist tried to shake the Thief's hand off the pearl, but he wasn't about to let her have it. Even if she did save him, however unintentionally.
And so, once again, the Thief and the Hypnotist tugged on the pearl back and forth while screaming at each other like tantrum-throwing children. In their hands, the pearl shined a dim mystical light.
"Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!"
"No! Mine! Mine! Mine!"
Neither of them noticed a huge, looming dark shape approaching from the side of the house. It watched them make fools of themselves for a little while before deciding to make its presence known.
"Ahem!"
The Thief and the Hypnotist stopped. They could both see out of the corner of their eyes a huge something stood right next to them. Slowly, but reluctantly, they turned their heads to see a giant wolf standing on two legs with long, gorilla-like arms staring back at them with fierce, squinting eyes.
He was the Chimera who, like the Mummies, was once human before being mutated by an evil wizard's magic spell but was able to escape slavery along with others like him.
The Thief, of course, had no way of knowing that. But after the day he's had, he was not surprised when the monster spoke.
"I'm only going to say this once," he said. "Give me the pearl."
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