D. J. MacHale
The Quillan Games
QUILLAN
I like to play games.
Always have. It doesn’t matter if it’s a simple game of checkers or something more brainy, like chess. I like board games like Stratego or Risk, and pretty much every team sport that exists. I like playing computer games and card games and charades and Scrabble, and when I was a kid, I was known to play a killer game of red rover. I like to win, too. Doesn’t everybody? But I’m not one of those guys who has to win constantly or I get all cranky. Why bother? When I lose, I’ll be upset for about half a second, then move on. For me, playing a game is all about the fun of the contest and seeing the best player win, whoever that may be.
At least that’s the way I used to think.
What I found here on the territory of Quillan is that games are a very big part of the culture. All kinds of games. So given the fact that I like games so much, you’d think hanging out here would be pretty cool, right?
Wrong. Really, really wrong. Games are about being challenged and plotting and developing skills and finding strategy and having fun. That’s all true on Quillan… except for the fun part. There’s nothing fun about what goes on here. On this territory games are deadly serious. When you play on Quillan, you had better win, because the price of defeat is too high. I’ve seen what happens when people lose. It’s not pretty. Or fun. I’m only beginning to learn about this new and strange territory, but there’s one thing that’s already been seared into my brain: Whatever happens, don’t lose. It’s as simple as that. Do not lose. Better advice would be to not play at all, but that doesn’t seem to be an option here on Quillan. When you live here, you play. You win, or you pay.
As ominous as that sounds, I’ve got to accept it because I know these games will somehow factor into the battle against Saint Dane. He’s here. This is the next territory he’s after. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. He sent me a big-old invitation. I already told you about that in my last journal. But there’s more-something I didn’t write last time. You see, another Traveler was here before me. I’m not talking about the Traveler from Quillan. I mean someone from another territory. I don’t want to tell you much more about it until I reach that point in this journal. My story should play out on these pages as it happened. The way I saw it. But I will say this much: I’m angry. Angrier than I’ve ever been since becoming a Traveler. If Saint Dane thinks challenging me to playing games is the best way to bring down Quillan, he’s in for a big surprise. He picked the wrong battleground, because I like to play games. I’m good. And I’m mad. Bring it on.
Mark, Courtney, the last time I wrote to you guys was from a fairytale-like castle here on Quillan. There was way more I wanted to write in that journal, but I didn’t think I had the time to get it all down. Besides, the information I gave you in my last journal was pretty intense all by itself. I needed to write all of that down while it was still fresh in my memory. I’m not sure why I was so worried. There’s no chance I could ever forget what happened during my last few minutes on Zadaa. No matter how many different ways I look at it, or try to understand it, or search for a reasonable explanation for what happened, I keep coming back to the same undeniable fact:
Loor was killed, and she came back from the dead.
No, let me rephrase that: I think I helped Loor come back from the dead. If I live to be a hundred, I can’t imagine a single day going by without reliving what happened in that cave deep below the sands of Xhaxhu. I know I already wrote about this, but I can’t get it out of my head. Those few minutes keep coming back to me like a movie that only gets so far before it automatically rewinds and plays again. Of course, the outcome never changes. Saint Dane murdered Loor. I saw it. He blasted out of the flume and drove a sword straight through her heart. She didn’t have time to react, let alone defend herself. He killed her in cold blood. Though she was gone, I didn’t get the chance to grieve, because I wanted revenge. What followed was a fight to the death between me and the demon Traveler. Or so I thought. The thing is, I beat him. I fought him like a crazed madman because, well, I was a crazed madman. I guess seeing someone you love murdered in cold blood would send anybody off the deep end.
Saint Dane and I fought as if we both knew only one of us was getting out of that tunnel alive. It was a vicious, violent battle that could have gone either way. But in the end he made a fatal mistake. He thought he had won, and charged in for the kill. I grabbed the very sword that he had used to kill Loor and swept it into place. My aim was perfect. Instead of finishing me off, he drove himself into the weapon. To the hilt, just as he had driven the sword into Loor moments before. I won. Saint Dane was dead. The nightmare was over. But my victory didn’t last long. His body transformed into a black mist that floated away from the sword and re-formed at the mouth of the flume. I looked up to see the demon standing there calmly, not looking any worse for wear. He stood there in his original form, standing well over six feet tall, wearing that dark Asian-looking suit. The lightning-bolt red scars on his bald head seemed to pulse with blood. It was the only sign that he had exerted himself at all. But what I couldn’t stop looking at, as usual, were his blue-white eyes. They locked on me and held me tight, taking away what little, breath I had left. We stayed that way for a long moment, staring, waiting for the other to make a move. But the fight was over. He gave me a cold, knowing smile as if to say everything had happened exactly as he had planned.
“I see you are capable of rage,” he said cockily. “I will remember that.”
“How could you…?” I gasped in shock.
“Didn’t Press tell you how futile it would be to try to kill me?” he said with a smirk. He kept his eyes on me and shouted into the flume, “Quillan!”
The flume came to life. I didn’t have the strength, or the will, to stop him. Even if I had, I wouldn’t have known how.
“Zadaa has been such an amusing diversion,” the demon said. “In spite of what you may think, Pendragon, this isn’t over. I can lick my wounds and move on.” He glanced down at Loor’s lifeless body and added, “The question is, can you?”
The light from the flume enveloped the monster. He took a step back and was gone. As the light disappeared, I could hear his maniacal laugh fading away.
Have I told you how much I hate that guy?
When I turned to Loor, I saw that I was too late. She was dead. I’m no doctor, but it didn’t take one to know that she was gone. Blood was everywhere. She wasn’t breathing. She had no heartbeat. I stared down at her, not believing that it was true.
It was only the night before that I had told her I loved her by trying to give her a kiss. But she turned away. I was crushed. It had taken every bit of courage I had to admit I had such strong feelings for her, but with that one small gesture she let me know that it was not meant to be.
She told me, though, that she had deep feelings for me too. She said, “We are on a mission, Pendragon. No group of people have ever been given such a monumental responsibility. We must prevail. We must stop Saint Dane. That is our quest. We are warriors. We will fight together again. We cannot allow emotions to cloud our judgment in any way. That is why I cannot be with you.”
It hurt to hear that, but she was right. We would fight together again. Letting our emotions get in the way of that, even in a small way, would be a mistake. Whatever feelings we had for each other would have to be put aside until the time was right. Or so I thought at the time. The next day I watched as Saint Dane killed her. As I sat there in that cavern, with my hand over her mortal wound, a million thoughts and feelings rushed through me. None were good. I had lost my friend. She was not only someone I loved, but my best ally in the battle against Saint Dane. The gut-wrenching realization began to settle in that the time for us would never be right, because she was gone. I found myself wishing with every ounce of my being that it wasn’t true.