by James Riley
Ellora stepped between them, raising her hands up again. “Forsythe, we can fix it. Really. You just need to—”
“Just think of it as getting a little push in the right direction,” Simon said, either not noticing or not caring how close Fort was to teleporting him into the ocean. “If you don’t want to make even more problems for yourself, I’d suggest you come with us, now.”
Simon turned to walk up toward the school but almost fell over as the rock beneath his feet rose up around his ankles, locking him in place. “Explain this to us one more time,” Rachel said, her hands glowing with Destruction magic. “You two geniuses planned for us to get caught?”
“No!” Ellora said, her own hands glowing with black light as she reversed time on Simon, freeing him from Rachel’s spell. “It was a possibility, yes, if we couldn’t get you out faster. But we would never have planned for it, or done this on purpose. This is why I kept trying to hurry you!”
“But you never said this would happen,” Fort said, wondering how cold the Arctic would feel at this time of year to the Time students. “You could have warned us!”
“I could have, yes,” she said, sounding resigned. “And if I had, you would have taken even longer to decide, and then your headmaster would have returned before we left. The only way to have avoided it completely would have been to freeze you and carry you here, like Simon wanted. But then we’d be treating you no differently than our teachers have been treating us, and I wasn’t going to do that, not if I could help it.”
“See?” Simon said. “I’m not looking so bad now, am I?”
Ellora glared at him. “Not helping!” She turned back to the others. “We threw the soldiers as far forward in time as our power allowed. There were too many to send any further, we just didn’t have the strength. But if you help us with the plan, all your problems with the colonel will go away. William’s idea is powerful enough to change all of our futures, no matter how bad they look now.”
“Unless we run out of time because you lot take too long again,” Simon said. Rachel sent a tiny lightning bolt in his direction, but he sidestepped it and stuck out his tongue at her. “Nice try, but I saw that—” he said, but froze in mid-sentence as Jia paralyzed him.
As much as Fort wanted to keep shouting at the Time students for not warning them, he knew that it wasn’t really them he was angry at. He’d known the consequences of coming, and he’d still chosen to try to stop whatever it was he’d seen in the future.
Colonel Charles was the bad guy here, not the Time students.
Assuming, of course, that they weren’t lying about everything.
“Okay, let’s go,” Fort told Ellora. “But this better be the last surprise. Tell us right now if there’s anything else we should know about ahead of time.”
She looked at Fort sadly. “Later, you’ll wish you hadn’t asked that, believe me. Come on, let’s go see William.”
And with that, she turned and walked up the driveway toward the school, leaving Fort to stare after her in disbelief.
“Hey, do you want us to unfreeze your jerky friend?” Rachel asked, pointing at Simon, who was still paralyzed.
Ellora paused, then shook her head. “William will come free him when we’re done. For now, it’s nice not to hear his voice for a few minutes.”
Leaving Simon behind, they followed Ellora up the circular driveway toward the white stone school. Three floors tall, the building was shaped like an L, with the long side running straight perpendicularly in front of them, and the leg of the L extending out parallel to them on their right.
In the dim light of the dome, the white stones gave off an eerie glow. Even after dealing with eternal horrors like the Old Ones, a small part of Fort actually felt nervous about walking into this old, creepy school. With the way his luck was running, the school was probably haunted by some ancient evil.
“Love voluntarily stepping into horror-movie sets,” Rachel whispered to Jia, apparently thinking the same thing. “Just my absolute favorite thing to do.”
“It’s just a school,” Jia said, sounding distracted. Not that Fort didn’t have enough to think about either, but somehow supernatural terrors had a way of pushing to the head of the line in his mind.
“A school for the dead, maybe,” Rachel said, shouldering into Jia. But Jia just shrugged, continuing on even as Rachel stopped in confusion.
“What’s wrong?” Fort asked as he caught up to Rachel.
“Gee’s acting weird,” she said. “You heard her before, she was all excited to break the rules and get over here. But something changed after that Simon kid brought us down to you.”
“The future I saw was pretty horrible,” Fort said. “She might have seen something even worse.”
“That’s probably it,” Rachel said, then moved on with him, but he noticed her eyes never left Jia as they walked.
A few yards ahead of them, Ellora climbed the stairs, then pulled on one of two tall wooden doors. It creaked loudly as it opened, and Rachel froze in place again. “Nope!” she said.
“It’s really not haunted, Rachel,” Ellora said. “Trust me. If any ghosts had been here, our teachers would have scared them away.”
That wasn’t exactly comforting, but Ellora was waving them through anxiously, so Fort gave Rachel a push up the stairs.
Rachel glared at him, then stomped ahead to where Ellora impatiently held the door. “There better not be anything creepy in here,” she said as she passed the Time student.
“Other than the boys’ egos, we’re all set,” Ellora said.
Fort walked through the double doors with Ellora just behind him and found himself in a lobby full of wood paneling on all the walls. A dusty fireplace filled the wall across from the door, with two large sets of armor on either side of it. Each set of armor was at least five feet tall and held an enormous sword, pointed at the floor.
“I’m calling it now,” Rachel said, pointing at the armor. “Those for sure come alive and attack us. Just a matter of time. Probably when we least expect it.”
Fort rolled his eyes, then turned around to say something to Ellora, only for his heart to stop in his chest from fright. “Whoa!” he shouted, leaping back several feet and pointing at two figures staring at him from one side of the lobby.
“No, don’t hurt them!” Ellora shouted as Rachel instantly started a Destruction spell. “They’re just soldiers! We had to freeze them, after having our own problems with our military. When they realized what we were doing, they came in force to take us captive. But we saw them coming and put up the dome.”
“Again, you could have warned us!” Rachel growled in annoyance, then strode over and tapped one of the frozen soldiers’ guns. “So that’s what the dome does, freezes people under it, everyone but you students?”
“Us, and anyone who comes in after the dome went up,” Ellora said. “But to keep this many people frozen takes a lot of effort. We’ve been taking turns, but it’s not going to last much longer. But William will tell you more about that. Come on, this way.”
She started down the hall past the soldiers, with Jia and Rachel just behind. Fort glanced in the opposite direction momentarily, where he found more frozen soldiers, at least a dozen of them this time.
Wow. The British government really didn’t like what these kids were doing, something that he’d noticed Ellora still hadn’t given any details on. What did the soldiers know that he and his friends didn’t?
“You’re going to get eaten by ghosts if you lag behind!” Rachel’s voice came floating back from down the hall, and Fort hurried to catch up, passing by an empty reception desk with papers piled neatly on one end.
The hallway they followed had what looked like classrooms on both sides, though they didn’t seem to have been used anytime recently. Most had large pieces of cloth draped over the desks to keep things from getting too dusty, and the chalkboards were empty.
The farther they got down the hall, the more soldiers they passed. Most were
running in the direction they were headed, but a few were staring back toward the lobby in fear. That didn’t help Fort’s nerves much, considering from the look of it, at this point they were running from the Time students.
“Just up these stairs,” Ellora said as they reached the end of the hallway. “Watch yourselves, though: There’s a bit of a time warp that somehow got stuck here.”
“A what now?” Rachel said, her eyebrows shooting up.
Ellora smiled slightly, then started up the steps, only to disappear, reappearing instantly a step from the top, then toward the middle, and finally back at the bottom of the stairs, where she groaned. “I think it was Simon, trying to save some time at one point before we got … lost,” she said. “But his spell never worked right, and now it’s just annoying, honestly. But you get through eventually.”
Got lost? Neither Ellora nor Simon had explained what had happened to the Time students yet. All Fort knew was what Cyrus had told him, about how using the magic had affected their minds somehow. Had they actually gotten lost in the past or future, leaving their bodies behind just like Fort had when he’d seen the tsunami and the future of the Oppenheimer School?
Either way, messing around with the stairs was keeping him from getting answers. Fort glanced up to the top landing, then opened a teleportation circle there and gestured for Rachel and Jia to go through.
“Hey, that’s cheating!” Ellora said as she attempted the stairs again, this time getting almost to the top before appearing all at once in both the bottom and middle. Both Elloras sighed, then waved at each other.
“We don’t have time for this!” Jia shouted at her, and Ellora nodded, her face slowly blooming with embarrassment. A black glow covered her, and she walked up the stairs again without any problem, then passed by them without a word.
Beyond the steps, another short hallway led to a few doors on either side, including one labeled HEADMASTER at the far end, down into the leg of the building’s L shape.
“We’re going in here,” Ellora said, reaching the door. She knocked once, then opened it slowly. “Hello, it’s me. I’m here with our new friends.”
As the door opened, Fort could make out more paralyzed bodies inside the room: a few soldiers, what looked like a teacher or two, and—
“No,” he whispered, frozen in the doorway, unable to move.
Sierra stood on one side of the room, her mouth open in what looked like a scream, her hands frozen in midair like she’d been trying to protect herself.
- ELEVEN -
SIERRA!” FORT SHOUTED, THOUGH HE knew she couldn’t hear him. He rushed toward her, narrowly missing her hands flung out in front like she’d been trying to cast a spell but had been stopped by the Time magic.
As he reached her, an odd pressure filled his chest, and he had to look away just to breathe. Not her, not Sierra, too—he couldn’t lose anyone else—
“She’s perfectly fine, my friend,” said a voice from deeper in the room, one Fort recognized from the video. “There’s no need to worry about her.”
Fort turned to find a comfortably decorated office, with a large, brown leather sofa on one side and a desk about three-fourths of the way across the room, just in front of a large fireplace with a crackling fire burning away within it. The boy who’d spoken sat in a large chair at the desk. “I bid you welcome, my fellow wizards,” he said. “You have arrived at a most advantageous time, and you have our thanks.”
Fort just stared at him, struggling through his shock and anguish to even form a sentence.
“This is how you say thanks?” Rachel asked, and Fort realized she was standing next to someone else he recognized, a frozen Dr. Opps. The founder of the Oppenheimer School looked terrified and had his hands out as well, as if to block some sort of attack.
“I regret that such actions were necessary,” the boy said, and slowly stood up from the desk. He pulled his hood off his head, revealing long, silvery hair, just like Cyrus’s. Except a golden circlet sparkled on top of his head, almost like a simple crown. “But the very fate of the world depends on the actions we take here and now.”
“This is William,” Ellora said, waving in his direction and not sounding thrilled. “And no, I don’t know why he’s talking like this.”
William went still for a second, giving her an irritated look. “I apologize for Ellora,” he said. “She has a hard time understanding the importance of the quest you must undertake.”
“Oh, I get the importance,” Ellora told him. “What I don’t understand is why you’re speaking like the narrator of a TV fantasy. The video was bad enough, and I told you they’d misinterpret what you were saying!”
William narrowed his eyes but turned his gaze back to Fort and his friends and forced a shaky smile. “Haters must, as always, hate,” he said. “I merely feel that a traditional tone might better suit the mood for our heroes here. Perhaps, Ellora, you would be more comfortable checking on our fellow wizards, to see if they need aid?”
She shook her head. “I think I’m good right here, thanks.”
William’s smile disappeared for a moment but came right back even stronger. “As you wish, of course,” he said to her. “But let us move on to the quest you must undertake, my magical friends. Please, sit.” He gestured to the leather seats in front of the desk. “We have much to discuss.”
“We have nothing to discuss until you let Sierra go!” Fort shouted, finally finding his voice.
Ellora sighed, giving him a sympathetic look. “Forsythe, you have to understand—”
“I don’t have to understand anything,” he hissed. “You want our help? Let her go, now.”
“I’m afraid to free her would require canceling the dome altogether, my young friend,” William said, leaning back against the desk, “as she and your headmaster were both frozen by it. And if we do that, we’d be inviting doom.”
“I don’t think ‘inviting doom’ is a thing?” Ellora said, then turned back to Fort. “Remember how you felt when you were sent forward in time? You didn’t even notice it. This is exactly the same thing: She’s completely safe and won’t know any time has passed when we release her.”
“I don’t care !” Fort said, feeling the heavy pressure in his chest growing even worse. “She was only trying to help you!”
“And we’ll help her by saving the world,” William said, and again gestured at the chairs. “Now please, sit, my friends, so we can address your part in this upcoming quest.”
Fort gritted his teeth but didn’t move a muscle, not willing to leave Sierra. Rachel and Jia both crossed their arms by his side, not sitting either. “We have some questions first, actually,” Rachel said. “Where’s Cyrus? He was here with Dr. Opps. Where are the other students from your video?” She paused. “And seriously, what is with you? I have a regular D and D game, and even I’m embarrassed at this.” She waved her hand vaguely in his direction.
William snorted. “Real dungeons and dragons await you, my courageous Elemental magician. But to answer your other questions, Timothy and Cerise have been tasked with keeping the dome in place.” He gestured toward the opposite end of the school. “As for my loyal Simon, you know where he is, assuming Jia paralyzed him as I’d foreseen. As soon as Ellora releases him, then he and Amelia will take over for Tim and Cerise, giving them a chance to rest.” He frowned. “The dome shall last for five additional hours, no more. That is all the time we might provide to you for your quest—”
“Where is Cyrus?” Fort said, not caring about any of that.
“Cyrus? He’s not here,” William said, his affected manner of speaking slipping a bit. “I thought he was at your school.”
What? But Sierra had confirmed he was here when Fort had spoken to her in the medical ward. “How can you not know he was here? Maybe he’s frozen somewhere. Did you look all around the school?”
Ellora snorted. “As if we’d be able to freeze Cyrus. He isn’t exactly someone—”
“Someone who we know that wel
l,” William finished, giving Ellora a quick look of warning, making Fort even more suspicious. William hadn’t wanted her to say something about Cyrus. But what? Why would they need to keep any secrets about his friend? What were they hiding about Cyrus?
Meanwhile, William was still speaking. “But yes, Cyrus may have been caught by the dome’s magic, indeed. If such circumstances would be the case, then he’s perfectly safe, just like the rest, and will be released as soon as the plan is complete. Now, if we could get back to that plan, and your roles in it—”
“You tell us the plan, and we’ll tell you what our roles in it are,” Rachel said, glaring at him suspiciously.
William smiled again, though this time it looked even more forced. “As you wish, my demanding allies. First, let me share a tale of the unfortunate tidings that have been plaguing us here at the academy.” He slowly waved his hands, as if setting the scene. “Picture, if you will, seven innocent boys and girls, welcomed to a new school just over two years ago. Quickly, these new students discovered that they all shared the same birthday, the so-called Discovery Day. But what they had yet to learn was that they would be learning Time magic, something that would ultimately—”
“Speed this up, we don’t need your entire life story,” Rachel said, waving her hand in a circle.
William’s eyes narrowed, and he looked about as irritated with Rachel as he had with Ellora. “Of course. I suppose we have no time for storytelling. To sum up, when we first used Time magic to view the future, we found it … difficult to return to the present. You’ve all now seen what’s to come, the world war that—”
“A world war?” Jia said. “We didn’t know it was that bad! All we saw was the U.S. and China …” She trailed off, shaking a bit. Fort noticed her fists were clenched at her sides.
“It’s worse than you think,” Ellora said. “But William would get to it faster if he’d talk normally.”