She crouched down beside one of the black, slimy bodies Justin had severed. Even without its head, the snake-like corpse was easily as long as she was tall, its slick, muscular flesh barely dimpling when Marci poked it. “They must have gotten washed into the storm water system at some point, and then the magic down here caused them to change.” She wrinkled her nose. “Itispretty thick.”
‘Pretty thick’ didn’t begin to describe the cold, pressurized magic Julius could feel pushing down on them from all directions. “I told you we should have turned around.”
Marci shrugged. “Well, at least this explains why the Kosmolabe led us here. A lake full of magically altered wildlife would definitely account for the blip I was seeing.” She looked around at the bodies littering the cement floor. “I wonder if they’re worth anything?”
“Would you stop talking about the stupid lampreys?” Justin growled, flinging the blood off his sword with a flick of his wrist. “We’re not down here for the fishing. Now let’s go find those mages for real before we waste any more— OW!”
His cry was accompanied by a loudwhackas he slapped his hand against to the back of his neck.“They spit at me!”he roared, whirling around to face the still-roiling water.
Julius was opening his mouth to inform his brother that lampreys didn’t spit when he saw the streak of smoking black bile coating the back of Justin’s neck. A second lamprey broke the water as he watched, lifting its head above the surface just long enough to spit another line of burning goo at Justin’s shoulder.
His brother ducked just in time. “Oh, that isit!”he bellowed, brandishing his sword at the water. “I’m going to eat every last one of you slimy bastards!”
“Justin!”Julius yelled, grabbing his brother by the shoulder. “Calm down! You can’t kill them all. There must be thousands in there.”Or more,he thought with a shudder. “Let’s just go before—”
Pain exploded over his wrist, and he cut off with a gasp. When he looked down, his whole lower arm was covered in the same black slime that was on Justin’s neck. It burned like hot oil against his skin, but before he could wipe it off on his shirt, a full-scale volley of black goo shot out of the water, coating the wall above their heads.
At first, Julius thought that was because the lampreys had terrible aim, then he looked up and realized the truth. “They’re aiming for the ladder!” he cried, ducking to cover his head. “They’re trying to cut us off!”
Even as he said it, Julius knew it was already too late. He also knew how the ladder’s metal had gotten so pitted. This was clearly not the first time the lampreys had sprung this trap. They’d hit the ladder perfectly, coating the entire bottom half in thick, acidic spit that smoked and hissed against the old steel.
The fumes were even worse. As if the rotted fish smell wasn’t bad enough, the acidic goo also reeked of magic. Dark, fetid, oily magic that was getting thicker by the second. Julius covered his mouth and nose with his hands and looking around for Marci, but she was no longer behind him. This sparked several seconds of panic before he spotted her on her knees at the far corner where the platform met the wall, yanking something out of her bag.
It looked like a collapsible laundry basket, the kind with the plastic ribs that you could fold up into a tiny ball, but would still spring back to its original size the moment you let up the tension. That sight was absurd enough to make Julius forget the danger for a moment to wonder why she would have such a thing. He was still speculating when Marci dropped the basket on the ground.
The plastic ribs snapped open the second she let them go, flattening out in a ring, and Julius realized it wasn’t a basket at all. It was a circle. A collapsible casting circle made of yellow tent cloth with layer upon layer of spell notation written around the edges in Marci’s meticulous handwriting.
“Get in!” she shouted.
Julius didn’t wait to be asked twice. He sprinted across the cement and into the circle just as the lampreys launched another volley of burning goo straight at their prey. It struck the wall behind them in hissing splats, but when the sticky stuff crossed Marci’s circle, it burned up in a white flash, landing in a patter of harmless ash against Julius’s chest.
He let out a long, relieved breath. “Nice work.”
“Always pays to carry an emergency shelter,” she said, nodding at Justin, who had miraculously managed to dodge every shot since the first one. “Is he coming?”
Julius had no idea. He was spared having to say as much, though, because at that moment, Justin swung his sword with a roar that shook the ground. For a second, Julius couldn’t understand why. From what he could see, Justin was swinging at nothing, and then the air begin to change. All at once, the bite of dragon magic was all around them, surging up so fast and sharp, Julius thought he was going to be bitten in half. Just before the pressure became unbearable, Justin finished the strike, and the black lake parted in front of him like the Red Sea.
Thanks to the glare of Marci’s magic, Julius saw the whole thing clear as a lightning flash. Justin’s strike had cut the water and everything in it, slicing through the enormous, tangled mass of lampreys hiding below the surface like a laser. He saw his brother, larger than life, the bloody wounds from the earlier bites already closing. More than anything, though, he saw the sword in Justin’s hands. The sword that wasn’t a sword at all.
It stilllookedlike a sword. It had a hilt and a wide, curved blade that was sharp on one side, like a long scimitar, but the blade itself was bone-white and slightly discolored at the tip, like an old tooth. An ancient fang of something very large and very, very deadly.
His strike finished, Justin stepped back, resting the Fang of the Heartstriker on his shoulder as the bite of the dragon magic faded and the water fell back into place, covering the bodies of the unknown number of lampreys he’d just chopped in two. “There,” he said, his voice thick with self-satisfaction as he turned around to give Julius a superior look. “That’show it’s done.”
Julius sighed. It wasn’t that he wasn’t happy they weren’t going to be eaten by overgrown sea snakes, but he wasn’t exactly looking forward to the next several hours of inevitable bragging. Justin was already opening his mouth to begin when something long, black, and glistening shot out of the water and wrapped around his waist from behind, yanking him off his feet back into the water.
“Justin!” Julius shouted, almost running out of Marci’s circle before he caught himself. Even if he had risked it, he would have been too late. Justin had already vanished beneath the black water without a trace.
He was still watching the waves when Marci grabbed his hand. Julius glanced over his shoulder in confusion to see her staring at him with her heart in her eyes. She looked like she was about to cry, though with everything that had happened, it took Julius a stupidly long time to realize why.
“Don’t write Justin off yet,” he said with what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “He’s very hard to kill. But we need to make a safe place for him to come up.” Or a safe place for them to take shelter in case Justin lost his temper down there. “Can you move the circle closer to the edge?”
Marci’s expression made it clear she thought he was being crazy optimistic, but she played along. “No. This circle’s a prototype. I haven’t figured out how to make it mobile yet.” She bit her lip. “I’m actually kind of surprised it worked just now. Maybe we can—”
Her voice cut off in a yelp as a wave of black, wiggling bodies shot out of the water straight toward them.
Julius moved instinctively, knocking the first lamprey away before it could smack Marci in the face. The next one made it past him, and though it began to smoke when it crossed Marci’s circle, the power that had incinerated the blobs of acidic spit must not have been strong enough to cook seven feet of wiggling, magically corrupted sea parasite. The lamprey crashed into Marci’s legs with a horrible, unearthly squeal before she kicked it away.
“What is goingon?” she cried. “I thought lampreys livedunderthe water!”
