Chapter 6: Rook Attack - NOTES

o   I figured if anyone besides the inexperienced Wonder would give a good Rook a chance it would be Magic Rock. He’s a smart guy and he knows that if Koro hadn’t pecked the imagination out of the last Glitch in Ur yet then there must be more to her story.

o   I knew early on how I wanted Wonder to find out about the Rook, and it wasn’t from Magic Rock or Mr. Trinkets outing Koro, so this was a little trickier to write. How do you introduce sworn enemies and convince one that the other’s not a threat without actually discussing the age-long conflict? I guess this chapter is how I did it, but I’m sure it could have been handled better.

o   I had to work in a brief reference to Tiny Speck, the company behind Glitch. It’s not super subtle, but it wasn’t meant to be.

Chapter 5: Inventory - NOTES

o   It always struck me as funny that your butler was never in your house. Generally butlers tidy up inside, but in Glitch they wait forever outside. That’s why, even when the house was his, I never had Mr. Trinkets go inside.

o   I always wondered about Magic Rock’s instantaneous teleportation abilities. He’s always there. You can’t escape him.

o   Unlike the fictitious Sebastian my house was incredibly messy. The “dreadfully cluttered with no sense of style line” is directed at myself entirely. I loved the idea of creating this awesome house with multiple floors and great decorations, but in the end I just wasn’t suited to it. I was always out in the world and really used my house as a glorified storage closet. Up until the announcement that Glitch was closing my house was a single level with only the starting furniture and stuff left EVERYWHERE. I had crap all over my table and floor and when I couldn’t fit anything else I just piled it outside. I’m a bit of a video game hoarder, I guess. I did keep a chicken named Alohomora in the back yard just to mix things up. Once the shutdown was announced I got rid of it all, either by donating it or just dropping it somewhere in Ur. Even my furniture got put away. In the end I left a bare, one-room house with starry wallpaper and a few trees in the backyard.

o   I liked fitting the wardrobe into the house in a way that Glitchen might have actually experienced it, rather than as just an interface on the website. Again, I purposely avoided describing what Wonder is wearing (if anything).

o   The collecting of bags and equipment is just a technicality. I didn’t want a lack of items to be a plot point later on, so I figured it would be better to explain how Wonder gained an expanded inventory and lots of foodstuffs ahead of time. Mostly just me being nitpicky about the realities of carrying supplies.

o   The specific mention of bringing along a toolbox was another side bit that got left out. I was planning to actually have Magic Rock teach Wonder how to use some of the tools later on, but it just kind of got lost in the story.

o   Firedog was my first ever Cubimal. He was a Firebog Street Spirit Cubimal. He was one of the few items I kept with me after the shutdown was announced.

o   The second Purple reference. Mr. Trinkets turned into a bit of a pusher in this story.

Chapter 4: New Friends - NOTES

o   Teleportation in Glitch always seemed painful to me. There were little jokes about not reappearing in the right order or winding up somewhere completely different than you meant to, but I know there was never any real danger. I kind of wish there was some inherent risk to teleporting, like in the Harry Potter universe. Transporting your molecules across vast distances and then rebuilding yourself is a tricky business with lots of ways it might go wrong. Plus, have you considered that if you break yourself apart into individual particles and then rebuild them somewhere else are you even still the same person? Think about it. None of this every stopped me from teleporting, mind you, but it’s something to consider.

o   This home street was completely invented for this story. There are a million home streets in this style, but I didn’t base the one Wonder visits on any particular person’s home street.

o   I also considered putting a tower on this home street and letting Wonder explore that, but I had to decide whether I wanted to write a story about a Glitch and their quest using references from the game, or I wanted to cram as many game references in as possible and then try to fit a story around that. I chose to focus on the story and leave out the extras. We all remember towers anyway.

o   From the beginning when I was piecing together the parts of this story I knew that I wanted to include Magic Rock and my butler, Mr. Trinkets, in Wonder’s party. Everyone needs a Magic Rock, he knows just about everything! The problem was that opinion on Magic Rock was split. Despite being incredibly helpful he is still a bit of a mystery so I invented some aspects of his history to fit the story.

o   Honestly I couldn’t tell you where I got the name Maurice. I just thought it would be funny to give Magic Rock a normal name, and while “Maurice” isn’t an especially normal name it is a lot more normal than “Magic Rock.” As soon as I wrote it I decided I would never refer to him as Maurice again in the story.

o   I loved the idea of the butlers being these weird golem-like creatures made from bits and pieces of things. Mr. Trinkets is 100% based on my butler from the game. Fun Fact: The name Mr. Trinkets comes from an expansive D&D campaign my wife and I played with some friends. It was the first time we had ever played and Mr. Trinkets was our pack-mule and party mascot. He even killed a goblin once when he got startled in a cave. We all still remember him fondly.

o   One of the saddest things about Glitch closing was all of the players describing saying goodbye to their butlers. A lot of players became incredibly attached to these things that were basically just there to make managing the social aspects easier. It’s a testament to the amount of emotional investment opportunities Tiny Speck created when they designed different aspects of the game. It’s one of the reasons people were so attached in the first place. I’m glad in the end I stayed on my home street with the real Mr. Trinkets to keep him company.

o   The whole Purple Flower thing was a running joke that kind of got left by the way-side. I just loved the subtle (and not-so subtle) drug and alcohol references in Glitch. It looked and felt at most times like a family friendly game, but there was such an undercurrent of degenerate behavior that it always made me laugh when it popped up in-game. I never messed around with No-No Powder, but I was well acquainted with Purple. I kept several plots of it on my own home street. Incidentally, if you want to relive your wild days of Purple use without the consequences just click this link to give your web browser a little Purple flavor. I bookmarked the URL and keep it as its own button on my browser. Now you can always feel like you’re high on Purple wherever you go on the web!

o   The use of “ma’amsir” was suggested by Kshandra during the whole “gender neutral” discussion on the forums. It’s a funny word that stuck in my mind so I worked it in.

o   I sort of loved the idea of an “Odd Couple”-like pairing of Magic Rock and Mr. Trinkets. You might even consider it a bromance, if there were such a thing in Ur.

o   I heard about people leaving notes similar to this one for their own butlers. It broke my heart a little bit so I wanted to include the same sentiment in my story.

o   The Glitch, Sebastian, was also entirely made up by me. I pulled the name out of thin air and I didn’t find a single actual Glitch named Sebastian so I made him the owner of the house Wonder was visiting.

Chapter 3: Alone Again - NOTES

o   I didn’t name any of the chapters when I wrote them, I just have a Word doc divided by horizontal divider lines. It wasn’t until I put them into the blog that I titled them. I sort of hated this chapter title when I wrote it, but I didn’t really have any better ideas. Now that Koro’s story is more fleshed out in my mind and in the rest of the story it feels like a better title to me.

o   Speaking of titles, none of these are supposed to be copied from or referencing any other work. I did, more than once, have to talk myself out of using a Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit chapter title, though.

o   This is a very dramatic scene for Koro, and she’s a very dramatic bird. One might even say overly dramatic. Her declaration that she’ll wait there for Wonder until she dies seems ridiculous, but that’s exactly the kind of thing that could happen in Ur. In fact it did happen all the time. People would go AFK and come back to find themselves in Hell constantly. Of course death for a Rook might not just mean a quick trip to Hell.

Chapter 1: First Steps - NOTES

o   Before I started posting this story I got on the Glitch forums and asked people’s opinions on doing a single gender version of the story vs. doing two different versions or trying some gender neutral alternative. My thinking was that gender and sex don’t play a role in Glitch at all so I wanted this character to embody that and for readers to be able to put themselves in Wonder’s shoes. The debate got a little bigger than I intended but there were a lot of good points made. In the end I realized there were no perfect solutions so I decided to do two different versions because it seemed less confusing than using completely unfamiliar gender neutral pronouns.

o   I also purposely left Wonder’s physical description as vague as possible for the same reason. I never actually say what Wonder looks like or what clothes he/she is wearing so that readers would fill in the blanks on their own. Incidentally Wonder is intended to be naked in the beginning until she/he finds clothes later in the story.

o   I had a lot of fun writing this part of the story. Probably the most fun because it was entirely light and comical and I knew things would get serious later on. I tried to channel some of the ridiculousness that Tiny Speck was so good at including in the game. Mostly I just tried to imagine what it would be like to find yourself fully formed with some idea of what life was about, but without the benefit of Magic Rock’s guidance in the early stages of our lives. Wonder didn’t get a tutorial before he/she woke up.

o   If you look at the tags at the bottom of the posts I tried to include the prominent regions and streets included in each chapter, even if they’re not named in the text. I never stated it, but Wonder woke up in Middle Valley Clearing, in Groddle Forest. I chose this because I’m fairly certain it’s where my Glitch woke up. I know for a fact it was Groddle Forest, but it may have been another street near Middle Valley Clearing, like Groddle Forest Junction or Pasha’sPlace.

o   There would certainly be plenty of things for Wonder to be curious about upon waking up. I chose to have Wonder focus on a Musicblock first because it seems to me like such an iconic item from Glitch that it’s instantly recognizable to any player, even noobs like me. Which Musicblock is it? I don’t know, umm… how about BB-4?

o   As soon as I started this story I knew I wanted to build a company around Wonder and I knew it would include a Rook. I love the look of ravens, crows and other black birds, and I was always intrigued by the idea of the Rook. I figured a Glitch who didn’t know anything about the world would have no reason not to befriend a Rook as long as it wasn’t trying to kill him.

o   Koro mentions that her name is not really a name, but more of a rank. This was a concept of the Rook social structure that I never fleshed out in the story because it didn’t really matter. “Koro,” as you probably realized, is an anagram of “Rook.” Almost nothing is known about the Rook so I started thinking about how their society might develop. They seem like a very single-minded, militaristic society so I thought maybe they wouldn’t have names because individuality is shunned (which is why they hate the Glitchen), so I imagined they would be identified solely by their ranks. Again, not being very creative, each rank would be an anagram of “Rook” with “Koro” being the lowest rank and “Rook” being the highest. Koro-the-character’s values didn’t align with the rest of the Rook so they cast her out and she remained at the lowest level her entire life and was never given another name.

o   So I know the bit with Koro naming Wonder is maybe a little cheesey, but I got stuck on the name Wonder really early on and I wanted to work it in. Cheesey as it is it also fits the character. It also put me in mind of Wander from Shadow of the Colossus, another hero traveling a strangely empty world looking for answers. Also, by some miraculous coincidence, there wasn’t an actual Glitch avatar named Wonder. There were several that used the word “wonder” in some form in their name, but none just named “Wonder.” That was a big plus because I didn’t want there to be any confusion on whether this was an original character or someone else’s avatar.

o   Every Glitch knows that jumping is an essential and enjoyable part of life. I used to jump endlessly for no reason. It’s so much more fun that just walking from place to place.

Chapter 11: Things Aren't Always What They Seem

Koro was still in shock several minutes after Wonder left her in the Rook Museum. This was exactly what she was afraid of happening. She should have explained things as soon as they met, but she was afraid of how Wonder might react. She definitely should have broached the subject when Magic Rock and Mr. Trinkets joined them. They seemed to come to an understanding and maybe they could have helped explain things to Wonder.

Koro knew she could sit in the dark for hours thinking about all the ways she had messed up, but there wasn’t time for that now. She needed to get to Magic Rock somehow and tell him what had happened. She quickly came up against her first problem when she realized the door was shut and door knobs were not designed with Rook feet in mind. No matter how hard she tried Koro could get the door open. She was stuck in the Rook Museum.

“This is no time to panic,” she told herself, though she suspected this might actually be the perfect time to panic. She sat perfectly still trying to force an answer into her brain. She was concentrating with all her might when her feathers were ruffled by a slight breeze.

“A breeze?” She looked around the room but couldn’t see much in the dark. “If there’s a breeze then there must be a way out.”

She took to the air to search the room and find the source of the draft. She was flooded with relief when she found several small windows set into the wall near the ceiling and one of them was open just enough for her to squeeze through.

It wasn’t a perfect solution because she still couldn’t get back in the tower to search for Wonder, but it was better than being stuck in that awful museum for the rest of her life. From way up here at least she could easily keep an eye on what was happening on the ground without alerting any suspicion. She desperately wanted to talk to Magic Rock, but she found him on the steps of the tower talking to several Vendors and she didn’t dare risk exposing herself to them.

She flew a few laps around the tower and made a note of the exits and then perched on a ledge above a side door to think about what to do.

***

Inside the tower Wonder was still turning the Crystal Heart over in her hand and sifting through everything Gwendolyn had said. She knew Gwendolyn was telling her truth about not being able to put the world back together, but it wasn’t easy to think about.

Wonder also thought about the advice Gwendolyn had given her about trusting her friends. She thought about Koro and if she was really her friend. Wonder just wasn’t sure after what she had seen. The voice in the museum said that the Rook are evil, and Koro hadn’t tried to deny it. Even Magic Rock and Mr. Trinkets were terrified when they saw Koro, and they had talked about how terrible the Rook were. Of course, they had also traveled together after Wonder introduced them and even seemed to get along. They never did tell Wonder the truth about the Rook, which made her question what the truth was.

Maybe Koro was different. She certainly didn’t act like she wanted to destroy everything. And she had mentioned several times that she never really fit in with her family. Maybe she really did just want a friend.

“I’ve made a huge mistake.” Wonder admitted to herself. She resolved to find her way back to the Rook Museum and talk to Koro. She still wasn’t sure what was true, but she would decide for herself and not base her feelings on some voice in the wall.

Wonder climbed back down the vines and walked out the door into the familiar hallway. She tried to retrace her steps as best she could. The run down to Room 23 had been a bit of a blur, but she made her way back to the Mezzanine with relatively little trouble. She opened the door to the Rook Museum and cautiously poked her head inside.

“Koro?” She asked the dark room. “Koro, are you still here?”

No reply.

“Come out, Koro, please. I need to talk to you.”

Still nothing.

Wonder stepped all the way into the room and pulled out her Firefly Jar. She checked the museum, avoiding looking at the other Rook-related artifacts as much as possible. Koro was nowhere to be found and Wonder was at a loss until she looked up and noticed the open window. Her spirits fell. “I’ve probably frightened her off and she’s flown away to where I’ll never find her again.” She stepped back outside and sat down in the hallway to think about her next move.

“Koro’s gone, maybe for good. Everyone else is waiting for me outside to tell them how I’m going to save them and fix Ur, but now I know I can’t do that.” She let out an exasperated sigh and leaned back against the wall. “This is a fine mess.” Further down the hall she noticed a set of stairs leading down and got an idea. She thought up her new plan while she was walking down the stairs.

‘Maybe there’s another exit I can try. If I can sneak out a side entrance I might be able to get Magic Rock’s attention and talk to him alone. He always has good advice.’

This set of stairs ran straight and long right down to the ground floor. She inched open the door at the bottom and found it opened directly onto a street adjacent to the one the Vendors were waiting on. She stepped silently out and closed the door behind her. Now she just needed to figure out how to get Magic Rock’s attention without alerting anyone else.

Wonder had only been considering what to do for a moment or two when she heard a rustling noise in a tree nearby. She looked up into the branches but didn’t see anything.

“Koro? Is that you?”

The street was silent for a second before she heard Koro’s voice from the tree. “Please don’t run away again.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” Wonder was so relieved to hear Koro’s voice she almost shouted, but then she remembered the feeling of betrayal and it cooled her excitement. “Why did you lie to me, Koro?”

Koro’s large, black bird head peeked from around the trunk of the tree. “I’m sorry. I really am. I just thought if you knew what I was you would run me off like everyone else.” She sounded sincere and Wonder’s anger lost some of its edge.

“I didn’t even know what a Rook was, why would I have cared?”

“Because everyone hates the Rook! If I had told you what my people did what would you have thought of me?”

Wonder considered that. “I don’t know, but it would have been nice to have gotten the chance to make up my mind. You were my only friend; I’m sure I would have taken your word over some old stories about what happened in the past.”

“You’re probably right, I was just so afraid of being left alone again. You were my only chance at having a real friend. The Rook kicked me out because I didn’t want to attack the Glitchen, but the Glitchen only ran or tried to attack me because I’m a Rook. I spent most of my life on my own, hiding and watching. I thought the Giants waking up would be the best thing that could happen. I would disappear and nothing would matter anymore, but then I was still here and everyone else was gone. I was more alone than ever! When I saw you just waking up I thought, ‘Here’s my chance. Maybe this is the start of something better.’”

Wonder was dumbfounded. Koro had always changed the subject when Wonder asked about her family. She just assumed Koro missed them and it was too sad to talk about. She had never considered that anyone might be happier in this new version of Ur. “Oh… wow. I don’t know what to say. I’m really sorry, Koro. I didn’t know.”

Koro dismissed it with a flap of her wing. “I know, I know. It’s not your fault. I should have told you. When you’re forced to live your life as an outcast I guess it makes you paranoid, but that’s no excuse. I just wish—“ but Koro never finished her sentence.

“Well, what do we have here?” Uncle Friendly stepped out from behind a large root near the end of the street looking very pleased with himself. “I heard voices and thought I would come investigate. I’m glad I did. Conspiring with the Rook? I expected more of you, Wonder.”

“No, Uncle Friendly, you don’t understand!” Wonder protested, but Uncle Friendly cut her off.

“I understand enough! The Rook are the enemies of this world and if you’re conspiring with them then that makes you the enemy as well.”

“But—“

“Now, I know you’re young. You’re still learning about this place, but you need to understand: the Rook are evil and they want nothing more than to see this world destroyed. Now, I’ll give you a chance to redeem yourself.” Uncle Friendly was towering over Wonder staring into her with his gigantic eye. “What did you find in the tower? Did you learn how to call the Giants back?”

Wonder didn’t know what to do. She was feeling panicked and her brain wasn’t working. All she could squeak out was, “No, not exactly.”

“Not exactly? Well, what does that mean?”

And then it was over. Wonder was too scared to think straight and started recounting everything that had happened in Room 23 including Gwendolyn’s plan to wake the Giants. Luckily she was so frightened she jumbled most of it and forgot some key parts, like the Crystal Heart, but Uncle Friendly got enough to understand that she wasn’t going to put the Giants back to sleep, she was going to wake them up and end this world for good.

He stared down at Wonder for a long time in shock until his surprise turned into a self-satisfied smirk. He pulled something from his pocket. “I don’t blame you, Wonder. You’re too young to understand what’s going on and the Rook have twisted your mind. But I can’t let you destroy this world. I have to do what I can to protect it.” He pressed something into Wonder’s hand.

Wonder looked down and saw what looked like a piece of paper. “What is—“

Uncle Friendly squeezed Wonder's hand around the paper and with a pop she disappeared.

Koro squawked and flapped her wings in the tree, but Uncle Friendly just looked up at her and smiled. “Go back to your friends and let them know your plan failed. Uncle Friendly is defending Ur now, and he won’t go down without a fight.” With that he turned and walked back toward the front of the tower.

<< Chapter 10: Room 23 | NOTES | Chapter 12: The Forest at Night >>

Chapter 11: Things Aren't Always What They Seem

Koro was still in shock several minutes after Wonder left her in the Rook Museum. This was exactly what she was afraid of happening. She should have explained things as soon as they met, but she was afraid of how Wonder might react. She definitely should have broached the subject when Magic Rock and Mr. Trinkets joined them. They seemed to come to an understanding and maybe they could have helped explain things to Wonder.

Koro knew she could sit in the dark for hours thinking about all the ways she had messed up, but there wasn’t time for that now. She needed to get to Magic Rock somehow and tell him what had happened. She quickly came up against her first problem when she realized the door was shut and door knobs were not designed with Rook feet in mind. No matter how hard she tried Koro could get the door open. She was stuck in the Rook Museum.

“This is no time to panic,” she told herself, though she suspected this might actually be the perfect time to panic. She sat perfectly still trying to force an answer into her brain. She was concentrating with all her might when her feathers were ruffled by a slight breeze.

“A breeze?” She looked around the room but couldn’t see much in the dark. “If there’s a breeze then there must be a way out.”

She took to the air to search the room and find the source of the draft. She was flooded with relief when she found several small windows set into the wall near the ceiling and one of them was open just enough for her to squeeze through.

It wasn’t a perfect solution because she still couldn’t get back in the tower to search for Wonder, but it was better than being stuck in that awful museum for the rest of her life. From way up here at least she could easily keep an eye on what was happening on the ground without alerting any suspicion. She desperately wanted to talk to Magic Rock, but she found him on the steps of the tower talking to several Vendors and she didn’t dare risk exposing herself to them.

She flew a few laps around the tower and made a note of the exits and then perched on a ledge above a side door to think about what to do.

***

Inside the tower Wonder was still turning the Crystal Heart over in his hand and sifting through everything Gwendolyn had said. She knew Gwendolyn was telling the truth about not being able to put the world back together, but it wasn’t easy to think about.

Wonder also thought about the advice Gwendolyn had given him about trusting his friends. He thought about Koro and if she was really his friend. Wonder just wasn’t sure after what he had seen. The voice in the museum said that the Rook are evil, and Koro hadn’t tried to deny it. Even Magic Rock and Mr. Trinkets were terrified when they saw Koro, and they had talked about how terrible the Rook were. Of course, they had also traveled together after Wonder introduced them and even seemed to get along. They never did tell Wonder the truth about the Rook, which made him question what the truth was.

Maybe Koro was different. She certainly didn’t act like she wanted to destroy everything. And she had mentioned several times that she never really fit in with her family. Maybe she really did just want a friend.

“I’ve made a huge mistake.” Wonder admitted to himself. He resolved to find his way back to the Rook Museum and talk to Koro. He still wasn’t sure what was true, but he would decide for himself and not base his feelings on some voice in the wall.

Wonder climbed back down the vines and walked out the door into the familiar hallway. He tried to retrace his steps as best he could. The run down to Room 23 had been a bit of a blur, but he made his way back to the Mezzanine with relatively little trouble. He opened the door to the Rook Museum and cautiously poked his head inside.

“Koro?” He asked the dark room. “Koro, are you still here?”

No reply.

“Come out, Koro, please. I need to talk to you.”

Still nothing.

Wonder stepped all the way into the room and pulled out his Firefly Jar. He checked the museum, avoiding looking at the other Rook-related artifacts as much as possible. Koro was nowhere to be found and Wonder was at a loss until he looked up and noticed the open window. His spirits fell. “I’ve probably frightened her off and she’s flown away to where I’ll never find her again.” He stepped back outside and sat down in the hallway to think about his next move.

“Koro’s gone, maybe for good. Everyone else is waiting for me outside to tell them how I’m going to save them and fix Ur, but now I know I can’t do that.” He let out an exasperated sigh and leaned back against the wall. “This is a fine mess.” Further down the hall he noticed a set of stairs leading down and got an idea. He thought up his new plan while he was walking down the stairs.

‘Maybe there’s another exit I can try. If I can sneak out a side entrance I might be able to get Magic Rock’s attention and talk to him alone. He always has good advice.’

This set of stairs ran straight and long right down to the ground floor. He inched open the door at the bottom and found it opened directly onto a street adjacent to the one the Vendors were waiting on. He stepped silently out and closed the door behind him. Now he just needed to figure out how to get Magic Rock’s attention without alerting anyone else.

Wonder had only been considering what to do for a moment or two when he heard a rustling noise in a tree nearby. He looked up into the branches but didn’t see anything.

“Koro? Is that you?”

The street was silent for a second before he heard Koro’s voice from the tree. “Please don’t run away again.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” Wonder was so relieved to hear Koro’s voice he almost shouted, but then he remembered the feeling of betrayal and it cooled his excitement. “Why did you lie to me, Koro?”

Koro’s large, black bird head peeked from around the trunk of the tree. “I’m sorry. I really am. I just thought if you knew what I was you would run me off like everyone else.” She sounded sincere and Wonder’s anger lost some of its edge.

“I didn’t even know what a Rook was, why would I have cared?”

“Because everyone hates the Rook! If I had told you what my people did what would you have thought of me?”

Wonder considered that. “I don’t know, but it would have been nice to have gotten the chance to make up my mind. You were my only friend; I’m sure I would have taken your word over some old stories about what happened in the past.”

“You’re probably right, I was just so afraid of being left alone again. You were my only chance at having a real friend. The Rook kicked me out because I didn’t want to attack the Glitchen, but the Glitchen only ran or tried to attack me because I’m a Rook. I spent most of my life on my own, hiding and watching. I thought the Giants waking up would be the best thing that could happen. I would disappear and nothing would matter anymore, but then I was still here and everyone else was gone. I was more alone than ever! When I saw you just waking up I thought, ‘Here’s my chance. Maybe this is the start of something better.’”

Wonder was dumbfounded. Koro had always changed the subject when Wonder asked about her family. He just assumed Koro missed them and it was too sad to talk about. He had never considered that anyone might be happier in this new version of Ur. “Oh… wow. I don’t know what to say. I’m really sorry, Koro. I didn’t know.”

Koro dismissed it with a flap of her wing. “I know, I know. It’s not your fault. I should have told you. When you’re forced to live your life as an outcast I guess it makes you paranoid, but that’s no excuse. I just wish—“ but Koro never finished her sentence.

“Well, what do we have here?” Uncle Friendly stepped out from behind a large root near the end of the street looking very pleased with himself. “I heard voices and thought I would come investigate. I’m glad I did. Conspiring with the Rook? I expected more of you, Wonder.”

“No, Uncle Friendly, you don’t understand!” Wonder protested, but Uncle Friendly cut him off.

“I understand enough! The Rook are the enemies of this world and if you’re conspiring with them then that makes you the enemy as well.”

“But—“

“Now, I know you’re young. You’re still learning about this place, but you need to understand: the Rook are evil and they want nothing more than to see this world destroyed. Now, I’ll give you a chance to redeem yourself.” Uncle Friendly was towering over Wonder staring into him with his gigantic eye. “What did you find in the tower? Did you learn how to call the Giants back?”

Wonder didn’t know what to do. He was feeling panicked and his brain wasn’t working. All he could squeak out was, “No, not exactly.”

“Not exactly? Well, what does that mean?”

And then it was over. Wonder was too scared to think straight and started recounting everything that had happened in Room 23 including Gwendolyn’s plan to wake the Giants. Luckily he was so frightened he jumbled most of it and forgot some key parts, like the Crystal Heart, but Uncle Friendly got enough to understand that he wasn’t going to put the Giants back to sleep; he was going to wake them up and end this world for good.

He stared down at Wonder for a long time in shock until his surprise turned into a self-satisfied smirk. He pulled something from his pocket. “I don’t blame you, Wonder. You’re too young to understand what’s going on and the Rook have twisted your mind. But I can’t let you destroy this world. I have to do what I can to protect it.” He pressed something into Wonder’s hand.

Wonder looked down and saw what looked like a piece of paper. “What is—“

Uncle Friendly squeezed Wonder's hand around the paper and with a pop he disappeared.

Koro squawked and flapped her wings in the tree, but Uncle Friendly just looked up at her and smiled. “Go back to your friends and let them know your plan failed. Uncle Friendly is defending Ur now, and he won’t go down without a fight.” With that he turned and walked back toward the front of the tower.

<< Chapter 10: Room 23 | NOTES | Chapter 12: The Forest at Night >>