Free Alcatraz versus the Scrivener's Bones by Brandon Sanderson

but everyone seems to hate them to an extent usually reserved for dogs and mothers. Why else make them out to be such idiots? “ Ah, look, the dark lord of evil h a s com e to attack the castle! Annnnd, there’s my lunch break. Have f un saving the world on your own, kids! “)
    In the real world, adults tend to get involved in everything, wh ether you want them to or not. They won’t disappear when the dark lord appears, though they may try to sue him. This discrepancy is yet another proof that most books are fantasies while this book is utterly true and invaluable. You see, in this book, I will make it completely clear that all adults are not idiots.
    They are, however, hairy.
    Adults are like hairy kids who like to tell others what to do. Despite what other books may claim, they do have their uses. They can reach things on high shelves, for instance. (Though, Kaz would argue that such high shelves shouldn’t be necessary. Reference Number sixty-three, which will be explained at a later point.)
    Regardless, I often wish that the two groups – adults and kids – could find a way to get along better. Some sort of treaty or something. The biggest problem is, the adults have one of the most effective recruitment strategies in the world.
    Give them enough time, and they’ll turn any kid into one of them.
    We entered the jungle.
    “Everyone remember to stay in sight of someone else in the group,” Kaz said. “There’s no telling where we’ll leave you if you get separated!”
    With that, Kaz pulled out a machete and began to cut his way through the undergrowth. I glanced back at the beach, bidding silent farewell to the translucent dragon, cracked from landing, its body slowly being buried in the sand from the rising tide. One wing still hung up in the air, as if in defiance of its death.
    “You were the most majestic thing I’d ever seen,” I whispered. “Rest well.” A little melodramatic, true, but it felt appropriate. Then I quickly rushed after the others, careful not to lose sight of Draulin, who walked in the rear.
    The jungle was thick, and the canopy overhead made the darkness near absolute. Draulin pulled an antiquated-looking lantern from her pack, then tapped it with one finger. It started to glow, the flame coming to life without needing a match. Even with it, however, it felt creepy to be traveling through a dense jungle in the middle of the night.
    In order to still my nerves, I moved to walk by Bastille. She, however, didn’t want to talk. I eventually worked my way up through the column until I was behind Kaz. I figured that he and I had started off on the wrong foot, and I hoped I could patch things up a bit.
    Those of you who recall the events of the first book will realize that this was quite a change in me. For most of my life, I’d been abandoned by family after family. It was tough to blame them, however, since I’d spent my childhood breaking everything in sight. I’d gone on such a rampage that I would have made the proverbial bull in the proverbial china shop look unproverbially good by proverbial comparison. ( P ersonally, I don’t even know how he’d fit through the door. Proverbially.)
    Regardless, I had grown into the habit of pushing people away as soon as I got to know them – abandoning them before they could abandon me. It had been tough to realize what I was doing, but I was already starting to change.
    Kaz was my uncle. My father’s brother. For a kid who had spent most of his life thinking that he had no living relatives, having Kaz think I was a fool was a big deal. I wanted desperately to show him I was capable.
    Kaz glanced at me as he chopped at the foliage –though he only tended to cut away things up to his own height of four feet, leaving the rest of us to get branches in our faces. “Well?” he asked.
    “I wanted to apologize for that whole midget thing,”
    He shrugged.
    “It’s just that…,” I said. “Well, I figured with all of the magic and stuff