Ana made a left, then a right. Harris sprinted to keep up with her. He could feel Xop and Jake close behind.
“Stop!” a female guard said as she ran toward them.
Harris followed Ana through several more turns before entering into the men’s locker room.
“Shit,” Ana said. “We’re cornered.”
“I’ve got an idea,” Harris said.
Antonio had lost them. He was cursing himself for his stupidity in falling for the hologram in the red skirt when he heard the crash of glass from a nearby hallway. Sure that they must have gone into the locker room, he made his way there. Unfortunately, a quick search of the area revealed no one. Several other guards hurried in as he searched.
“Where’d they go?” one of them asked.
“Shit,” Antonio said, pointing to a broken window with a towel laid over the bottom of the frame. “They must have jumped.” He ran to the window and looked down. There wasn’t anyone in view, but there was a row of big bushes just under the window. Maybe they had used the bushes to break their falls. Maybe they were still hiding in the bushes. “They made it out. Search the grounds.”
The guards turned and exited the locker room in a rush.
Harris poked his head out from a dirty laundry basket. He felt Ana standing up behind him in the same laundry basket. Jake and Xop peeked out from the dirty towel hamper.
“Nice idea, Harris,” Ana said. “It worked.”
“But we still have to get out of here somehow.”
Ana held up a sweaty security guard uniform shirt.
“We might as well go through all the clichés,” Jake said.
As they dressed, Harris said, “I’m going to create a protective rune that we can use as a shield just in case.” He drew the rune in the air with his wand. When it appeared, glowing slightly, he grabbed it from a handle he had drawn in the middle and carried it like Captain America’s shield. “It can probably stop bullets and minor bolts,” he said. “God, I hope we don’t need it. I’m . . . more of a worrier than a warrior.” He wished he hadn’t said that last thing in front of Ana.
With dirty uniforms on, and Xop, and their normal clothes wrapped up in towels, they strode out of the locker room, doing their best to act as if they were security guards.
A guard came running up to Jake in the lead.
“Did they catch the little punks, yet?” Jake asked before the guard had a chance to speak.
“No, not yet.”
“Damn.”
“It doesn’t seem like they got away with anything, though.”
“That’s good.”
The guard hurried away.
Ana sneaked back toward Hall 27. Harris almost called for her to stop, but held it in. It was her sister the dragon had captured, not his. Instead, Harris followed her. But as she peeked around the corner to Hall 27 her head shot backwards.
“Shit,” she said. “Antonio is there, again.”
“I’m sorry, Ana,” Harris said.
“Let’s get out of here, guys,” Jake said. “We can’t help Silvia from jail. We’ll have to figure something else out.”
The way out was nerve-racking, but they made it back to the car and away from the Magical Artifacts Department, empty-handed but free.
Quest for the Ring, Part One
Chris Miyazaki saw where this was going. As he sat in the Caster’s meeting and listened to the discussion about who was going to be sent to the Realm of Brocéliande, he had the sudden feeling it was going to be him.
“We need to do it by sorority,” an older Caster said. “That’s the way we’ve always done things.”
“Exactly,” another cried.
“Okay, we’ll do it by seniority,” the Caster manager, Jane Wayne, said. “But first, are there any volunteers?”
The room fell silent.
“So no one wants to travel to the beautiful Realm of Brocéliande? No one wants to embark on a heroic quest to find the Ring of Brocéliande and save the world? No one?”
A part of Chris wanted to go. It sounded epic, and maybe even fun. But he was much too new at this to have any idea what he was doing. He only knew a handful of spells and he didn’t feel as if he’d truly mastered any of them. Facing the “Three Fears” sounded pretty damn dangerous, too. Although it gave him a vague sense of shame, Chris kept his hand down.
“Chris Miyazaki,” Jane said.
“Yeah?”
“As the least senior person in the Conjuring Department, you have been selected to participate in this quest. Congratulations.”
“But . . . I don’t know if I’m ready for something like that . . . ma’am.”
“Oh, don’t sell yourself short. I’m sure you’ll do just fine.”
“But . . .”
“If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we’d all have a merry Christmas. Now we don’t really have time for a discussion about this. You’ve been given a job assignment and you’re expected, as an employee of the Site, to carry that assignment out. And again, I think you’ll do just fine. I heard good things about you from your instructors at magic school.”
“You did?”
“Well, no. But if I had talked to them I’m sure they would have said good things.” Jane’s face flushed just a bit. “So are we good, here? You’re going to do it, right?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good man. We’ll have to send someone with you to help you with the instructions for getting into a place called Gandore’s Vault. And you have to work using the buddy system per Caster Protocol.” She looked over the seated group. “Pete, right?” she said to another young man.
“Yes?”
“As the second-least senior person I see here, you’ll be accompanying Mr. Miyazaki to provide support for his quest.”
“Okay,” Pete said. He was a tall skinny white guy with a mop of red hair and a deep-seated disinterest in his eyes.
“First you guys will need to go to the Conjuring Department and get the instructions for getting through the ‘Three Fears.’ They’ll direct you from that point. Chris, do you have your wand?”
“Yes.” He held up his gnarled wand with pride.
“All right, then. Good luck!”
At the Conjuring Department, Pete and Chris were met by a manager type and taken to a meeting room. There they were split up and given specific instructions.
“Pete,” one manager said as he handed him a large, dusty book, “We’ve got the pages you’ll need, bookmarked, here. You should read through the entire thing as Chris is being prepared for inter-dimensional travel.”
Pete looked at him without a word.
“Okay?” the manager said.
“Sure. Okay.”
“Sounds good, then. Good luck to you.”
Pete shrugged and carried the book over to Chris.
“Be prepared for anything, and always hold on to your wand,” some manager told Chris.
A mad scientist-looking man appeared and said, “I can take them over to Portals ‘R’ Us,” and whisked them away into his Site SUV.
“I’m Eddie,” he said amiably once they were all in the vehicle.
Eddie did not seem to be looking at the road, though he drove at top speed. He glared at Pete, seeming to have instantly decided he didn’t like him, turned to Chris, and said, “So you’re the one that’s going in, right?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Then maybe this quest stands a chance. I’ve been busy researching . . . something about it, but that’s irrelevant at the moment. Anyway, I didn’t get a chance to look at that grimoire you’ve got there, Pete, but my advice is for both of you to read through the relevant parts of it in their entirety.” He stressed the last word. “This dude seems dull; I wouldn’t rely on him much if I were you, Chris.”
Chris was embarrassed for his n
ew partner, but Pete didn’t seem to hear what Eddie had said.
“Don’t let them rush you,” Eddie continued. “It’s funny, they’re painfully slow about everything right up until the point where being more methodical makes sense, then it’s now now now. If they can get it wrong, they—”
Eddie slumped over against the window.
Chris, who’d sat shotgun at Eddie’s insistence, stared in disbelief for a moment. The man was sleeping as the SUV barreled down the road.
“Eddie?” Chris said, glancing back and forth between Eddie and the road ahead. “Eddie!” Louder. The vehicle veered off to the left and headed for a building.
“—will get it wrong.” Eddie turned the wheel and got back onto the road as if nothing had happened. “It’s like Murphy’s Law, but they do it to themselves . . . . Idiots.”
Eddie pulled up to the front of a building with a big sign that read: Realm Travel Department.
“Here you are. Good luck, Chris. Pete, don’t fuck it up too bad.”
Chris came through the inter-dimensional portal onto a beautiful sandy beach. The air was warm and a light breeze wafted the pleasant scent of the salty sea toward him. To the left, a spectacular sunset filled the sky with hues of greens and blues. To the right, three moons of various sizes seemed to be rising from the darkened horizon. On the black-sand beach sat a small wooden rowboat with two oars.
Beyond a stretch of sea laid an impressive island. Massive rock formations covered in mossy green jutted up to astonishing heights. In the spaces between the rock spires was a thick dark forest.
Chris took all of this in with an overwhelming sense of wonder. This was his first time away from his own world. The surreality of it all was almost too much for his mind to bear.
“Do you hear me?” Pete said morosely in his ear. Chris had been given an inter-dimensional earpiece with which to communicate with Pete back on Earth. Chris wished he weren’t alone out here, now. He also wished he had someone other than the uninterested Pete talking to him, but the buddy system was unbreakable, and all of the managers insisted that Pete be the one in communication with him. They had gone to the Realm Travel Department together, but Pete had stayed behind with the inter-dimensional communicator because they had only prepared one Travel Permit for this quest.
“Yeah, I hear you.”
“I guess that’s prolly the Isle of Avalon you’re seeing,” Pete said. “Yer ‘spose to take a boat and row over to the island.”
“Okay.” Chris pushed the boat into the waves. “Shit,” he said as his shoes and the bottoms of his pant-legs were soaked. He had meant to try and jump in before getting wet at all, but an unexpected wave had rushed in and got him.
“On the way to the island, try not to think of anything scary,” Pete said.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. Just reading what is says, here.”
An ominous shiver crept up Chris’s spine.
As he rowed, he tried to think of pleasant things. He pictured puppies and kittens, baby bunnies. He thought about his favorite candy, Chocoballs from Japan, wishing he had some now. His mind traveled back to when he was five years old, when his parents had taken him to Japan for the first time to meet his grandparents. He felt the warmth of his family, the adventure of playing out in the Japanese countryside. He had played with sticks and rocks as if they were monsters fight—
Monsters probably weren’t the best thing to think about, now. He quickly tried to come up with something else, eventually falling into a memory from his teens. He was at the beach with Hannah, his first crush. It was the day he had his first kiss. That day was perfect. He could remember it like it was yesterday. They had seen a shark fin out—
Nope.
Puppies again. More candy. He tried to taste it with his imagination.
Okay, this was going fine. He was about halfway to the island and nothing bad had happened. He’d simply keep thinking happy thoughts and he’d be at the island in no time.
Then it happened. A thought lodged in his mind and refused to be driven out. He urged his brain to go somewhere else but found that he couldn’t force himself to not think about it.
He had pictured a sea monster, a kraken, just underneath the boat.
Chris began to row furiously, as if the kraken were really there. The idea was ridiculous, but it also seemed so real.
His arms and back burned as he poured everything he had into each stroke of the oars. With rhythmic intensity he drove his feet against the stern of the rowboat while pulling the oars back with all of his strength.
He only had about a hundred yards to go when a shiny black tentacle crested the surface of the dark water. Chris let out an involuntary shriek and heaved the oars even harder.
The tentacle extended higher up into the air. Another one appeared, then another. A massive form emerged from the water. A nightmarish creature began to take shape. Menacing red eyes rose up and focused on Chris as he rowed. Horn-like growths curved out in random directions along the edges of its head. A gaping mouth with rows of horrible teeth opened wide in a silent scream.
Chris dropped the oars and pulled out his wand, realizing he could never row fast enough to get away. His knowledge of spells was limited to some minor bolts (basically small shocks of electricity), minor lifting spells, and illusions. Most of his schooling was focused on the basics, with more detailed training meant to be on-the-job.
As one of the beast’s appendages hurtled toward the boat, Chris tried to hit it with a bolt. He missed his target and the giant tentacle smashed the bow of the rowboat, ripping it away and sinking it into the sea.
The force of the impact launched Chris backward into the freezing water. Upside down, and surrounded by splintered debris, Chris completely lost his bearings under the churning surface.
Something wrapped around his lower leg—encompassing it in a shock of burning pain—and tugged him deeper, away from the faint light of the sky. He blindly aimed his wand at his encircled leg and fired a bolt.
The tentacle released its grip, but Chris remained trapped underwater. He writhed helplessly among a mass of twisting tentacles. The churning water was chaotic. He let out an eerie, muffled shout as he tried to reach the air above. An effervescent surge of rising bubbles issued from his mouth, but he could not make any progress in his flailing efforts to breach the surface.
“Hello? Chris? What’s going on over there?” Pete’s voice was muted, but slightly more alert and still clear in Chris’s earpiece. “You didn’t think of something scary, did you?”
Another tentacle grabbed Chris around the wrist and pulled him up out of the water. He gasped for breath as the kraken brought him in front of its eyes. Chris searched the area while racking his brain for any idea of how he could break free.
Floating in the water underneath him was a broken oar, the end of which looked sharp. He clasped his wand in the hand the kraken hadn’t grabbed and put the entirety of his concentration into lifting the shard of oar from the wreckage with magic.
Slowly, it began to move upward.
The monster brought Chris closer to its mouth, the rows of teeth mere feet away, the stink unbearable.
With a guttural grunt, Chris swung his wand toward the kraken. The broken oar sailed through the air like a spear and pierced the beast’s left eye.
With a convulsion of pain, the kraken dove down out of sight, but not before it hurled Chris toward the island.
Chris tumbled through the air, rolled once across the surface, and splashed down into the water, again.
When he resurfaced, he spun around in an attempt to locate the monster. A few tentacles thrashed around roughly forty yards away. He looked back to the island. It was at least that far to the shore. Could he possibly hope to swim there before the kraken found and caught him again? Chris didn’t think so.
As he treaded water, thankfu
l that he still held his wand, he considered his position.
Inspiration hit him as the kraken began to move in his direction.
Closing his eyes he pictured a giant Great White Shark. He held out his wand, focusing on what such a beast would look like: its dimensions, its contours. He tried to imagine every possible detail in what little time he had.
The being began to take form. Indistinct at first, the form became more and more solid. The illusion looked more like a child’s drawing than a real shark, but Chris hoped it would be enough to fool the kraken.
For a tense moment the kraken stopped and stared at the giant shark. Then, in one fluid motion, it jetted away into the dark depths of the sea, leaving behind a thick cloud of black ink.
The shark illusion vanished as Chris began to swim toward the island. His heart pounded and lungs begged for air. The exertion of swimming was almost too much for him.
But just as he thought he couldn’t reach out for another stroke, his foot touched the bottom.
He crawled onto the beach and collapsed in the warm white sand, muscles and lungs burning. He wished like hell that he had thought of a marshmallow man, or anything other than a damned kraken, but at least he’d made it through alive.
“Are ya there yet?” Pete said in his ear.
“Yes,” Chris spit out between panting breaths. “I’m on the island.”
“Okay, so the next thing yer ‘spose to do is find something called the Well of Despair.”
The Softer Side
of Zoth-Avarex
In the car, Harris, Ana, and Jake were discussing their next move when a voice came over the radio.
“We now bring you this exclusive interview with the dragon in Seattle. Northwest News Radio presents Sophia Ball, live from the Space Needle.”
“Hello,” a high-pitched woman’s voice said. “My name is Sophia Ball and I’m coming to you live from the top of the Space Needle. I’m here with Zoth-Avarex in his second ever Earth interview.”
“Thank you, Sophia,” the powerful, gravelly voice of the dragon said.
The Conjuring of Zoth-Avarex Page 9