CORBAN

"The battle is the Lord's, and he will give all of you into our hands."

1 Samuel 17:47

A boy named David once stood in front of a giant that nobody else was brave enough to fight. He did not win because he was big. He won because he knew the battle belonged to God. Keep David in your heart as you read about the day the Titan rose.

Every team has a move they save for the very worst day. The Tide Trio had one too, and they had promised each other they would never, ever use it.

It was called the Tidal Titan. Three heroes, melted together into one giant taller than a house, strong enough to lift a sunken ship and set it gently back on the water.

But it was dangerous. When three become one, you can forget you were ever three at all. You can get lost inside all that power and never quite find your way back to being just a kid again. So they kept it locked away, deep in the Sandcastle, for a day they prayed would never come.

This is the book where that day came.

Hold on tight, brave reader. The Titan is about to rise.

Everybody thought Doctor Undertow had finally learned his lesson. Everybody was about to find out they were wrong.

He had been sulking down in the cold trenches, muttering to himself, when the whole floor of the ocean began to tremble. Far below, the Old Deep was stirring in its sleep, and its strange power leaked up through the cracks like icy light. Undertow held out his soggy hands and drank it in, more and more, until his eyes glowed like two stovetop burners.

When he rose this time, he was not the same soggy villain who kept losing to a bunch of kids. He had built himself a war-machine out of sunken ships and deep-sea iron, a towering armored shell with him tucked snug in the chest of it. It made him forty feet tall.

He waded toward the shore, and every step shook windows for a mile in every direction.

"KEYSTONE!" he bellowed, in a voice like a foghorn full of gravel. "Come out, come out! Come and watch me take your precious little town apart, brick by tiny brick!"

This time, he was not playing around.

The Tide Trio did what they always did when the world needed them. They suited up, they linked their hands together, and they became the Triple Tide.

For two whole years, the Triple Tide had been their biggest, brightest, most powerful answer to absolutely everything. A roaring wall of water and ice and stone, with three brave hearts beating in the middle of it.

They hit the iron giant with every single thing they had. A flood strong enough to move a mountain. A sheet of ice thick enough to stop a runaway train. A fist of solid rock the size of a school bus.

The iron giant did not even slow down. It lifted one enormous arm and swatted the entire Triple Tide aside like a beach ball, and the three of them came apart and tumbled across the sand, their suits flickering and sparking.

For the very first time in their lives, the biggest thing they knew how to do was simply not big enough.

"Okay," Jackson groaned, spitting out sand. "New plan. We need a new plan, and we need it about ten seconds ago."

A streak of fairy light shot down from the Sandcastle and stopped in front of them. It was Pip, and she was not smiling, not even a little.

"There is one more thing you can do," she said quietly. "I had hoped you would never need it. There is a way for the three of you to become one. Not a wall. Not a team. One single giant. The Tidal Titan."

For a moment, nobody spoke. They had all heard the old stories.

"But you must listen to me very carefully," Pip went on. "When three become one, it is easy to forget you were ever three. The power is so big, so loud, that the I can swallow the we. Heroes have gone into the Titan and come out, and forgotten the faces of their own best friends. Some did not come out at all."

Corban swallowed hard. "Then how do you stay yourself?" he asked. "How do you not get lost?"

Pip looked right at him, and for the first time her voice was gentle. "You do not, Corban. Not alone. A Titan needs a center. A heart that holds the other two and refuses to let go. It needs a Keystone."

And everyone on that beach knew exactly who the Keystone was.

Corban was scared. More scared than he had ever been. And he might have stayed frozen there in the sand forever, if he had not turned around and seen the town.

The iron giant's enormous shadow was sliding across the boardwalk now, swallowing it whole. And under that shadow was everything they had spent the entire summer protecting.

There was the little kid who had dropped his ice cream, clutching his giant carrot plushie. There was the dog from the soccer game. There was the bus stop and the grumpy neighbor's fence and the school, each one with a tiny calm-seed growing quietly beside it. There was Squirt, peeking terrified from a tide pool.

And just like that, Corban was not scared anymore. Or rather, he was still scared, but something much bigger than the fear had walked up and stood right next to it. He looked at his two best friends.

"We do it," he said. "Right now. Before that thing takes one more step toward them."

Hudson nodded once, calm as still water. Jackson cracked his knuckles and grinned a shaky grin. "Been waiting my whole life to be a giant," he said.

They stood in a triangle on the dark sand, the way Pip had told them, and they put their hands into the middle, one on top of the other. Corban stood in the center, the Keystone, holding all of them.

The fear tried to crawl back in. So Corban said the truest thing he knew, the thing his dad always told him, and this time he said it loud enough for all three of them to hear.

"You did not put the brave in there. God did. It is already in you. Now hold on to me, and do not let go."

Their three lights, blue and teal and green, reached out and wrapped around each other, and then they were not three lights anymore. They were one. A pillar of brightness roared up off the beach, taller than the lighthouse, taller than the iron giant, and when it cleared, something new was standing in the surf.

It had Corban's flight and his wild elements. It had Hudson's ice and his deep, deep calm. It had Jackson's thunder and his fearless, roaring heart. Three boys, one giant, every gift at once.

THE TIDAL TITAN HAD RISEN.

The two giants met in the shallows, and the whole shore shook like a drum. Iron against light. Fear against courage.

The Titan caught the giant's first punch in one glowing hand and held it. With the other hand, it swept a great curving wall of water up behind itself, a shield between the battle and the boardwalk, so that not one single person in that town would be touched by what came next.

Then it went to work. It moved like Corban, quick and bright. It struck like Jackson, hard and booming. And every time the iron giant tried something sneaky, it answered with Hudson's cool, patient ice, freezing the trick before it could land.

The town cheered from behind the watery shield. The Titan was winning. But up inside all that brightness, something was starting to go wrong, and only Corban could feel it.

The three of them were beginning to blur. The longer they fought as one, the harder it became to remember which thought was Corban's and which was Hudson's and which belonged to Jackson. The we was quietly turning into a single, enormous I.

Right at the peak of the fight, the Titan forgot. It forgot it had ever been three small boys on a beach. It felt only huge, and powerful, and alone.

Down in his iron shell, Undertow saw it happen, and he cackled. "That's it, Keystone! Feel how big you are! You will never be three little nobodies again. Why would you ever want to be?"

And deep in the center of all that light, the small quiet part that was still Corban heard him, and knew the only way home.

He did not reach for more power. He reached for the opposite. He remembered small things. He remembered the sound of Hudson laughing through his nose. He remembered Jackson naming a beeping toy Greg. He remembered his own mom and dad and his little sister, waiting for him at a kitchen table with the porch light on. Real things. True things. Names.

"Hudson. Jackson. It's me. Hold on. We're going home."

With three hearts beating clearly again, the Titan struck one last, perfect blow. The iron giant cracked straight down the middle, and Doctor Undertow went tumbling backward into the surf with a very large, very wet splash.

Then the great glowing giant knelt down in the shallow water and gently, softly came apart, melting back into three exhausted, sandy, grinning boys, lying in a heap on the beach with the whole safe town cheering behind them.

They had done the impossible thing. And, even harder, they had found their way back.

But far, far below, where no cheering could reach, the Old Deep was not the least bit worried. Undertow had only ever been a toy it was idly playing with. And that very night, up in the Sandcastle, the warm fairy lights began to flicker in a way they never had before, and Pip stood very still, staring at them, suddenly afraid of something else entirely.

But that is a story for Book Seven.

Super Corban is a made-up adventure. But the truth hidden inside this one comes from a real story in the Bible, in First Samuel, chapter 17.

God's people were terrified of a giant named Goliath. He was over nine feet tall, wrapped head to toe in armor, and every single day he roared that nobody alive could beat him. For forty days, every grown soldier was too afraid to even try.

Then a shepherd boy named David showed up. He was too small for armor. He had no sword, only a sling and five smooth stones. But he was not afraid, because he knew something the giant did not. He said the battle did not belong to him at all. It belonged to God. With one stone and a heart full of courage, David won the fight the whole army had been losing.

Just like the Tide Trio against the iron giant, David could never have won by being the biggest or the strongest. He won by trusting the One who is bigger than any giant in the whole world.