Alcatraz versus the Scrivener's Bones by Brandon Sanderson Read Free Book Online

missiles at me!”
    Bastille gave him a harsh stare, then glanced to the side as I rushed up, grabbing a chair to steady myself.
    Ahead, the fighter launched another missile.
    I focused, trying to get my talent to engage at a distance and destroy the jet like it did guns. Nothing happened.
    Australia twisted the Dragonaut just in time, throwing me to the side, my hands slipping free of the chair. That’s one problem with making everything out of glass. Handholds become rather difficult to maintain.
    Bastille managed to stay up, but she had on her Warrior’s Lenses, which enhanced her physical abilities. Kaz didn’t have any Lenses on, but he seemed to have an excellent sense of balance.
    I rubbed my head as the missile exploded off in the distance. “This shouldn’t be possible!” I said. “That jet has so many moving parts, my Talent should have been able to stop it easy.”
    Bastille shook her head, glancing at me. “Glass missiles, Alcatraz.”
    I’ve never seen anything like this,” Australia agreed, glancing over her shoulder, watching the jet’s fire trails. “That ship isn’t Hushlander technology – or, well, not completely. It’s some kind of fusion. Parts of the jet body look like they’re metal, but others look like they’re glass.”
    Bastille gave me a hand to help me back up to my feet.
    “Aw, birchnuts!” Kaz swore, pointing. I squinted, leaning against the chair, watching the jet bank and turn back toward us. It seemed more maneuverable, more precise, than a regular jet. As it turned toward us, its cockpit started to glow.
    Not the whole cockpit. Just the glass covering it. I frowned, and my friends seemed equally confused.
    The jet’s canopy shot forth a beam of glowing white power, directed at us. It hit one of the dragon’s wings, spraying out shards of ice and snow. The wing, caught in the grip of the cold, froze in place. Then, as its mechanisms tried to force it to move, the wing shattered into a thousand pieces.
    “Frostbringer’s Lens!” Bastille shouted as the Dragonaut rocked.
    “That was no Lens!” Australia said. “That fired from the canopy glass!”
    “Amazing!” Kaz said, holding on to his seat as the ship rocked.
    We’re going to die, I thought.
    It wasn’t the first time I’d felt that icy pit of terror, that sense of horrible doom that come from thinking I was going to die. I felt it on the altar when I was about to get sacrificed, I felt it when Blackburn shot me with his Torturer’s Lens, and I felt it as I watched the F-15 turn back toward us for another run.
    I never got used to that feeling. It’s kind of like getting punched in the face by your own mortality.
    And mortality has a wicked right hook.
    “We need to do something!” I shouted as the Dragonaut lurched. Australia, however, had her eyes closed – I’d later learn that she was mentally compensating for the lost wing, keeping us in the air. Ahead of us, the fighter’s cockpit began glowing again.
    “We are doing something,” Bastille said.
    “What?”
    “Stalling!”
    “For what?”
    Something thumped up above. I glanced up, apprehensive as I looked through the translucent glass. Bastille’s mother, Draulin, stood up on the roof of the Dragonaut . A majestic cloak fluttered out behind her, and she wore her steel armor. She carried a Sword of Crystallia.
    I’d seen one once before, during the Library infiltration. Bastille had pulled it out to fight against Alivened monsters. I’d thought, maybe, that I’d remembered the sword’s ridiculous size wrong – that perhaps it had simply looked big next to Bastille.
    I was wrong. The sword was enormous, at least five feet long from tip of blade to hilt. It glittered, made completely of the crystal from which the Crystin, and Crystallia itself, get their name.
    (The knights aren’t terribly original with names. Crystin, Crystallia, crystals. One time when I was allowed into Crystallia, I jokingly dubbed my potato a “Potatin potato, grown