by Beam, Brian
Remember when I mentioned the various fighting styles my uncle, Chasus, taught me? Well, in this case, I fell into Tau’Shal, a form focused mainly on disarming and disabling. Sliding behind the aged wizard, I yanked his arm from the cage and bent it behind his back, incapacitating it with a twist of his wrist. I threw my other arm around his neck, squeezing hard enough to show him I was serious while still allowing him to breathe.
“Don’t try anything,” I hissed. “I even think you’re about to try something, I’ll snap your neck. Understand?” I felt bad for threatening the wizard in such a way, but I had to make sure he was properly intimidated in order to prompt him to tell me the truth.
The elder wizard nodded his head, his body trembling.
“There was a squirrel brought into the Wizard Academy a month ago. Where is it?” I snarled. If only demanding answers about the location of a squirrel didn’t sound so damn ridiculous.
“I-I do not kn-know,” he stammered.
My arm tightened around his throat. “Where is it?”
I felt the wizard swallow against my arm. “Laboratory four. I-it is in laboratory f-four.”
“Don’t lie to me. I was just in there.” Max definitely hadn’t been there. That room had contained nothing but tables stacked with black wooden boxes of various sizes.
“Then I d-do not know. I swear.” The wizard stammered in fear. I felt like a complete and utter ass for what I was doing to him.
“What about the dragon child, encased in a blue . . . a blue something?” Yes, really intelligent, I know.
“It is in the s-same room.”
I let out a deep breath. “Okay, I’m going to let you go, but if you try anything, I will kill you,” I threatened, once again feeling horrible about doing so.
He shakily nodded his understanding.
After snatching the small cage off the table, I forced the wizard to face away from me. “Put your hands above your head so I can see them and don’t move a muscle.”
As the wizard raised his arms, I released him and stepped backwards towards the door. I couldn’t believe I’d just threatened an Idrolin-blooded wizard who technically could’ve killed me in a heartbeat. I set down the cage and backed through the doors into the hallway.
I was pondering whether I’d have time to give Laboratory Room 4 another search or not when a strident, drawn-out chime reverberated through the hall, its volume undulating. Behind me, I heard a loud click sound from Laboratory Room 6’s doors. Though not a Litiera-blooded genius—Litiera’s the goddess of knowledge—I was fairly certain that I was officially locked out of every room in the basement. The chime had probably been some sort of alarm, one that I was the cause for. Stupid brash actions.
Not knowing what to expect, I did what any other self-respecting trespasser would do: I ran. I ran fast. My injured ankle was forgotten as I sprinted towards the stairs as if my life depended on it. Thinking back, I guess it kind of did.
The stairs came into view, as well as a squad of five Wizard Guard members with their black hoods raised coming down them. Oh, and two of them had thick-muscled black dogs like those I’d seen at the front entrance of the Wizard Academy. I slid to a halt, my only means of exit blocked by the five wizards and their dogs.
One of the Wizard Guard wizards, a middle-aged man with a black moustache and more muscle than any wizard had a right to have, turned to the others with his arms raised. He held up two beefy fingers on each hand, shaking them towards both curving directions of the hallway. The four men divided into pairs, each with one of the crystal-leashed dogs. That meant two of them turned my way. Their black dog pulled its leash taut, its front legs lifting off the ground as it struggled to break free towards me.
The wizards closed in, their dog snarling with spittle flying from its long muzzle full of sharp teeth. Two rows of sharp teeth, actually. No dog I’d ever seen had two rows of teeth. I realized that my invisibility did nothing about my scent, and this dog—er, creature—could apparently track intruders by scent.
The two men picked up their pace, letting the black creature lead them to me. The wizard holding the leash held up his free hand, which was now glowing with a white aura. Behind me, I heard the second creature’s snarling barks echo towards me, revealing the hallway to be a giant circle. The beefy wizard stood at the bottom of the steps, blocking my access to them. I was completely trapped.
Times like these can make a man question if a simple life of working on his adoptive parents’ farm would be preferable to tracking down his birth parents and attempting to stop an evil wizard, an evil wizard’s sadistic protégé, and possibly his own father from using the undead, magically enslaved living, and eldrhims to wage a war. Whew, that was a mouthful. Well, pageful.
Of course, such a life was no longer an option. I had to save my best friend and find the girl I loved. I had to retrieve Xalis so Til’ could return him to the Snowy Waste, making certain that Bhaliel’s sacrifice hadn’t been in vain. I had to stop Raijom. I had to stop . . . whoever was behind the green rocks in Gualain. For any of that to happen, I had to first escape the Wizard Guard.
Taking a deep, preparatory breath, I started running forward towards the closest two wizards and their vicious dogish creature. The creature went wild, jerking the wizard holding his leash face first to the ground. The creature tore its leash from the wizard’s hand and rushed me. In a moment of forward thinking, I dropped to the ground, anticipating the creature’s leap. And leap it did, soaring with bared fangs towards where I’d just been standing. As it soared over me, I jumped up and sprinted towards the wizards.
The still-standing wizard held up a hand in my direction. His other hand had something wrapped around it that I hadn’t noticed before. Something living. It took me a moment to realize it was a snake. While a small part of me tried to understand how he could be okay with a snake wrapped around his hand, the larger part was more concerned about the reddish glow around his other hand.
From just in front of the wizard, a wave of blue fire rolled towards me, hovering just above the floor. I sprung into a massive leap with all my strength, just barely cresting the flame as I passed through the scorching heat rising from it. I landed on the other side with a painful roll of my injured ankle, but was still able to throw out my arm and slam it into the wizard’s chest as I ran by, knocking him to the ground to join his partner. I felt a sudden chill, the wizard’s fire winking out with his break in concentration.
All of this happened in a small handful of heartbeats. I would only have another handful before the black, too-many-toothed creature caught back up to me and more spells were thrown my way. Then, I’d have maybe a thimbleful after that before the second pair of Wizard Guard wizards and their own ferocious creature reached me. In other words, I had to get past the muscle-bound wizard blocking the only way I knew of out of the basement, and I had to do it fast. Looking down at his wide stance, I figured a good slide between his legs would do the trick.
Preparing to drop into said slide, I heard a snarling bark sound from behind me. I spun just in time to see the black creature, its crystalline leash trailing behind it, speeding towards me. I threw myself against the wall, striking it with a grunt. The creature rushed past and slammed into seemingly nothing with a loud yelp before crumpling to the floor.
The beefy wizard cursed, giving away the source of the spell that had taken down the black creature. Trapped, I grabbed the Vesteir-sigiled fortune block through my shirt, ready to resort to giving a desperate prayer, but then I got an idea. An idea that had about a thousand—no, make that a million—to one chance of working, but it was the only one I could think of on such short notice.
I tugged the fortune block out from my shirt and pulled it off over my head. Behind me, I heard the other two wizards getting to their feet and calling for the other pair to hurry with their creature—they called it a gruheln. I had mere moments and just one shot at getting out of my predicament.
I gave the fortune block a kiss and launched
it towards the beefy wizard with as much force as I could manage, snapping my wrist as if skipping a flat stone across a pond. If the barrier was a concentrated wall of air as Grayson had used on me the night before, then I figured that maybe the fortune block would be thin enough to cut through it if thrown just right.
The fortune block became visible as it went spinning from my hand and, to my relief, tore through the invisible barrier. The thick wizard who’d created the barrier didn’t realize what was happening until the fortune block slammed into his forehead with a nice “thump.” His hands shot up to where the block had struck, blood trickling through his fingers. Score one for ridiculously undeniable luck.
I ran forward, hoping the spell had dissolved with his break in concentration. I passed through unimpeded, shouldered the bloody-headed wizard aside, scooped up my fortune block, and started up the stairs.
Escaping through the Wizard Academy’s main entrance would’ve be akin to willingly handing myself over, so I continued past the ground floor. The whole place was probably on lockdown anyway, the undulating alarm still blaring through the halls. My plan didn’t involve leaving through any door, though.
If I could get back into the walkway, I could open the door on the opposite side, thereby creating the illusion of attempting escape through the ancillary building I’d originally entered from. I could then double back to slip out of one of the horizontally slit windows lining the walkway’s walls. It was a fairly foolproof plan . . . if the walkway doors weren’t also locked down . . . and if I didn’t break a leg or neck from the fall.
The second floor was still empty of wizards, and I made it within sight of the walkway door and its single guard with no problems. As I neared, I spotted the softly glowing circle on the wall that would be my ticket out of this mess. Even though I’d failed to rescue Max and Xalis, I’d at least live to try again.
Something seemed different as I ran towards the door, though. It took me a moment to realize what it was, but it finally hit me. Ahead of me was a square band of black material run through with rust-colored veins jutting a fingerbreadth from the walls, floor, and ceiling. The boxes in Laboratory Room 4 had been made of the same type of material. It definitely hadn’t been in the hallway when I’d passed through before.
With no time to worry about it, I continued running. As soon as my body passed through the black square, I was suddenly visible. There was no ease into visibility as had been the case when the potion had worn off the night before. I simply went from invisible to visible in an instant. With the change came the nauseating, weakening aftereffects of the potion, only this time they were much worse. My body collapsed to the ground, and I violently emptied my stomach onto the stone beneath me.
My gaze turned up to the guard, my now blurred vision distorting his form. All I could tell was that he was moving towards me with his palm raised.
Chapter 27
An Unlikely Rescuer
The wizard paused outside the puddle of half-digested food and bile I’d so pleasantly decorated the red carpet with. Maybe he’d wanted to keep his polished black boots clean. If that were the case, my second round of vomiting ruined any chance of that.
“Get up,” he snarled, shaking vomit off a shiny, calf-high boot.
After a couple of dry heaves and a nearly lost battle with keeping my bowels in check, I looked up at him, barely able to keep on my hands and knees without collapsing. “As much as I’d love to acquiesce to—” My sarcastic answer was interrupted by another round of dry heaving. “I can’t,” I finished miserably.
“Well, then I will just have to—” The wizard’s voice cut off midsentence. His sudden silence was strange, but I was more focused on the pain in my stomach and throat as I continued to convulse with racking dry heaves.
“Have to what?” I asked once the wave of severe nausea lessened to a non-vomiting level, throwing a little snarkiness into my tone as if it would help me save some pride.
The next thing I knew, I was roughly jerked erect by my collar. The room spun vertiginously as I attempted to lock my rubbery legs in place beneath me. It didn’t work, and I fell to the ground on—you guessed it—my ass.
“Jeilan’s blood,” a male voice cursed, though it sounded decidedly gentler than the Wizard Guard wizard who’d been guarding the door.
Before me stood a blue-robed man, his pale face a blur. The door guard lay crumpled to the floor behind him. I blinked a few times, unsuccessfully trying to clear my vision and make sense of the scene.
The man crouched, his short hair and beard seeming a golden halo around his face in my blurred sight. “You drank a potion to make you invisible, didn’t you?” The accusation in his voice was sharp. “My guess would be that you procured it from Ulys. Now, what am I going to do with you?”
My thoughts flashed to the wizard who’d saved me from Grayson. He’d told me that if I were to be caught again, I was likely to be “silenced.” Add in Ulys’s threat, and I was understandably panicked. I tried to swallow that panic along with the bile rising in my throat.
Suddenly, I felt a chill run through my body, the familiar sensation of magic being used on me. It was as if winter had taken residence in my heart, pumping ice through my veins. While healing magic tended to send warmth through me, other types tended to have that same icy chill. I had no way of knowing what the wizard was doing to me, but I was in no condition to do anything to stop him. The majority of my energy was going into keeping certain substances from exiting my body.
The sound of snarling gruhelns down the hallway behind me drew the blurry wizard’s attention. He then turned his eyes to me. “I am going to help you, but you are going to have to work with me, okay?” I weakly nodded. “Okay?” he repeated. I nodded again, clenching my jaw as my body threatened to sick up again. “Just say it,” he commanded, annoyance starting to bleed through his tone.
“Okay,” I answered, not understanding why two nods of my head hadn’t been enough of an answer for him.
“Just stay silent,” he snapped as he stood. Clumsily grabbing me under both of my arms as if having trouble placing his hands, he dragged me across the carpet and leaned me against the wall. At least he was thoughtful enough to not drag me through my own vomit.
“Who are you?” I asked, trying to make out his face by squinting my eyes. It didn’t work.
“Quiet,” he hissed, stepping away around me. He stopped by the walkway door and dropped to the ground, splaying his arms out to his sides. I was more than a little bewildered by his actions.
Several moments later, the sound of multiple running footsteps joined the increasing volume of gruheln barks and growls. I turned my head to see several blurry forms approaching from down the hall. The battle to keep myself from sicking up or soiling my pants began anew.
“Wizard Saiyre!” one of the approaching figures screamed concernedly. What I assumed to be the five members of the Wizard Guard who’d chased me in the basement crowded before me, their two leashed gruhelns in tow. Not a single one of them looked my way. The gruhelns continued to growl and fight against their leashes, but they weren’t focused on where I sat. I could’ve sworn that my heart completely stopped as I sat still as a mountain, trying to not even breathe for fear of being heard.
The largest blur, assumedly the beefy wizard I’d hit with the fortune block, knelt beside the downed wizard who’d come to my rescue. “Saiyre,” he repeated in a deep voice. He started to reach towards the wizard he’d identified as Saiyre.
Saiyre suddenly convulsed and shot up to a sitting position before the beefy wizard could place his hands on him. His head twisted back and forth as if looking for something.
“He ran through there,” Saiyre panted convincingly, his arm lifting towards the walkway door.
“But the lockdown—”
“I do not want to hear about how the door should not have opened for him. I saw him go through. See what he did to us?” Saiyre gestured to the man in the blue and black tabard lying on the floor. “G
o after him!” he commanded, rising shakily to his feet.
“Yes, Wizard Saiyre,” the beefy wizard acknowledged. “Gilesh and Brandin will take the two of you to the Medica Ward.”
“No, they will assist you in catching that Othanor-blooded criminal,” Saiyre snarled, leaning against the wall as if he couldn’t stand by himself. His gruff tone didn’t fit his voice. “The intruder’s invisibility was dispelled by the abelyr gate, so he should be easy to find.”
Saiyre went on to give a false description of me. I was made out to be an emaciated man with greasy hair hanging down my back, dressed in tattered rags and obviously gone mad from having drawn spell energy from my own body. I’d left with several items belonging to the Wizard Academy, and it would take all five of the Wizard Guard members present to apprehend me.
I would’ve laughed, but between being terrified of revealing my presence and struggling to not mess myself, I didn’t feel much like laughing.
“Go. Now. I will take care of things here,” Saiyre finished brusquely, finally standing on his own and adding a dose of resolve to his voice. I started to wonder if this guy was a wizard or a Stefost-blooded actor. Stefost is the goddess of the stage. Trust me, I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.
The beefy wizard gave some sort of salute and put his hand against the door, causing it to click loudly. With my blurred vision, I couldn’t be sure, but I thought he cast a suspicious glance back at Saiyre. Rightfully so. If the door had still been locked, then how had anyone gotten through it? He remained silent, though, and pressed the glowing round stone beside the door, causing the strange chime to sound. With a wave of a thick arm, he led his fellow Wizard Guard members and their canine-like gruhelns down the walkway.
Once the door shut behind them, Saiyre crouched by my side again. He pulled something from a pocket in his robe and held it to his lips. The cream-colored object radiated a soft glow at his touch.