The valley was no longer a valley. Mountain peaks split and crashed downward hundreds of feet, adding to the tremors. Tectonic plates that had been silent for millions of years pushed upward with incredible speed, forcing their way skyward. Randall was afraid but he held his ground.

Giant cliffs rose all around him. The quaking earth pushed him to the ground. He strained with every ounce of strength he could muster. The Urania Wand had revealed his fate, and he was ready for it.

Not to be contained, pulses of evil energy pushed outward, trying to break through the bond that threatened to crush it. It thrashed and pummeled the uranium shield. Randall sensed a crack beginning to form. If he didn’t act quickly, the shield would splinter and all would be lost.

The battle was at a standstill. He needed something that would give him one last burst of power. Good must triumph over evil.

Good versus evil! He nearly laughed aloud as he realized what was missing. The final ingredient.

With one final gasp, he rose from the ground, ran to the nearest cliff, and rammed the Urania Wand into the rising wall. Waves of green light poured from the face of the cliff at the same time that waves of evil energy suddenly recognized Randall as the source of its obstruction and turned their full fury upon the small boy. He screamed as it ripped at his soul, consuming him in a river of malignant hatred, turning him into a pillar of crimson light.

And at that moment, he blindsided the hatred that consumed the evil with every ounce of love in his heart. It peeled off in layers—his love of the Earth he had sworn to protect, the parents he had lost. His love of Gretchen. And finally the love of the man he thought of as his second father—that crotchety old man who gave his life purpose and believed in him.

The wall cracked ever so slightly, but it was all the edge Randall needed. Every second of his short life passed quickly through his mind, followed by every act of evil possessed by the moonbeams. He willed the uranium shield toward him and it responded like an iron fist. The shield could not separate the boy from the evil that consumed him. It bore down upon the evil and crushed it within its grasp.

And then the valley was no more. A mushroom cloud exploded. Swirling clouds of green and red rose high into the stratosphere beyond the pull of Earth’s gravity, scattering the precious remains of one heroic young man into the infinite cosmos of space.

Chapter Thirty-Six

In the humble room of a hogan, an old Navajo woman served an herbal broth in wooden bowls to five warriors on the brink of exhaustion. There should have been joy—they had won the battle. Instead, they were filled with remorse. Coralis had told them of Randall’s fate.