Then I turned away. No time to explore or get sentimental. Dagney was dying. I scanned the moon’s surface, but it was simply too basic for my mother to have hidden the breastplate here.
The Little Mother was barren.
I needed to reach the other moon, the one called Father.
I took a running start, each step throwing me across the moon’s surface, and I wasn’t even using the boots’ magic. Gravity worked differently here; each jump threw me faster. How was I supposed to estimate the distance between the moons, and … how would gravity affect that? I couldn’t just go 100 percent, because they weren’t that far from each other.
I knew enough about math to know I was way out of my depth here.
My mother would make it possible. She’d make it difficult, but it had to be possible.
I just had to take a wild guess. I threw my hands backward and exploded into a running leap. 40 percent?
The moon loomed larger, larger; oh crap, I aimed too far. I reached the larger moon with an impact that jammed my joints as it shoved me through the surface and deeper, down below the surface, lodged between the moon rocks. The tight and heavy rocks formed a Ryo shaped hole deep into the surface.
But at least I’d stopped.
I climbed upward, ignoring the aches in my ribs and the way the impact into the moon’s side had made my joints crack and left a splatter of blood on the moon’s surface.
I searched the moonscape until I saw the ruins of a boy made of rusted gears, pine legs, and a porcelain smile. I stepped to it and bent down, undressing the ruins of my favorite story. The solid gold breastplate was covered with copper moons. I exhaled and looked up.
A third moon hid in the distance. Just for me.
With my name a world, and a secret moon hiding beyond, I knew my mother was watching me. No matter what we’d been through, or the times she wasn’t there when I needed her, I knew she waited on a different world, cheering me on, hoping and praying and waiting impatiently for the moment we’d be back together.
I knew it like I knew my father was doing the exact same thing.
“Hi, Mom,” I said to the empty surface of the moon. “I’ll be home soon.”
Now, how to get back?
100 percent again? Dagney would have had a map of the stars and been able to estimate perfectly by their position. I had to get back to her so she would do the math for me.
I timed my step and leapt. The light from reentry curved in an arch of sparks and lens flares. I hurdled through the dark and into the atmosphere.
Ahead of me, a cubed line of glitch floated like a cloud in the sky. I barely recognized it before I realized I should try to avoid it, and then before I could even think of how, I went through it.
The boots unequipped and my game vision sparked, and then went out.
The hair on my arms stood on end as I fell through the sparks. Stripped of powers, magic, or even my stats, I had nothing but the ever-approaching surface and the healing breastplate that Dagney needed. Gravity snatched me and the leap became a fall.
The wind ripped at my clothes, but I didn’t stop, not as I fell through thick and bristling clouds. The breastplate shook in my hand, the copper circles ringing like wind chimes. I was too high, my descent too fast. I’d made myself a meteor. The g-force pressed my neck backward.
I could see the castle, but it was nothing but a speck in the distance. I wasn’t going to make it. Not unless the boots restarted.
I opened the Breastplate of Healing. My only hope to survive was to put this on. Unless my extra lives would save me? How many did I have?
My stomach rolled. My time to make this choice grew shorter with every inch I fell. Come on boots, come on.
The extra lives might save my body here, but the impact would kill me for real.
My game vision flickered. I saw a flash of my stats, my health bar fading. And a warning. Bold and loud. This item can only be used by one player.