The earth blob landed in the hall and lay there, trembling like an isolated earthquake. I almost got my hopes up that the spell’s duration was running down and it would just expire on its own. Surely the tiny bit of element Sifuso used had been consumed by now. Then the monster slowly rotated most of its bulk directly toward the lacertian that had accidentally summoned it, and another row of gravel teeth popped and began to hungrily grind.
“It was an accident, I swear!” Sifuso apologized as he fled.
The dirt pile rumbled after our lizard. Azarin and I were between the blob and its target, so for us, it was run after Sifuso or get flattened.
Students fled in every direction. Danny grabbed hold of a rope ladder and climbed toward the upper rooms. Even thoughhe was the one who’d made everything far worse, Rufus went in the opposite direction as fast as his stubby dwarf legs could carry him. The out-of-control elemental curse was fixated on Sifuso, so it didn’t divert to grab any of the other nearby students to grind them into paste.
The great Tower of Primopolus had a spiral staircase which once ran through its center. Now that this section was set on its side, that shaft was our main hall through the Tube. Over the last couple of months, all of us students had chipped in, piling up rubble and building platforms and ladders so we could reach more rooms. It’d taken lots of work and sweat. The earth monster smashed all our efforts to pieces in seconds. Boards snapped, ropes broke, and hundreds of hours of our labor came crashing down.
“Lead it outside!”
Thankfully, Sifuso listened to me, because he turned toward the nearest exit. Normally, lacertians are shockingly fast—they’re a predatory species after all—but he was still suffering from Danny’s poorly aimed cold spell, so was sluggishly limping along.
You wouldn’t think a few tons of living dirt would be that fast, but it was gaining on us. Its movement shook the floor so much that we were in danger of getting knocked off our feet.
Azarin looked toward one of the windows high above. “Running is stupid.”
“Wait, what?—”
Except she’d already lifted one gloved hand. “Ascend.”And was promptly dragged straight up by air magic. As she rose with a graceful swiftness, she yelled after me, “Don’t worry. I’m not abandoning you. I’ll flank it.”
I cursed myself for not having my own air-enchanted glove on me, but I’d been working with fire magic at the time and hadn’t wanted to cause an unexpected reaction between the twoelements. I was jealous of her, because levitating away sure beat the foolishness I was currently engaged in.
Sifuso and I pushed open the scrap wood that covered what had once been a window in the side of the mighty tower, which now served as our front door, and rushed out into the daylight. Daylight, of course, was a bit of a misnomer in the Under Slump, as this district existed in the perpetual shade cast by the Slump, which was the neighborhood floating directly over our heads, but it was still brighter out here than our handful of light charms kept throughout the interior of the Tube.
The cold smacked me in the face. The endless chill was the worst thing about this city, and this was the time of year they calledwinter.The others didn’t seem to mind it so much, but they came from realms that had things like seasons, whereas I came from a land where even our rain was made of fire, so I hated it.
I shoved the scrap wood door closed in the monster’s nonexistent face, but that didn’t slow it down at all. When the blob slammed into the gap, only a portion of it squeezed through. That was enough to send our door flying and me sliding away. Cracks appeared in the Tube’s walls as it pushed, but because the exterior walls were a lot sturdier than the interior, the creature was momentarily stuck. The gravel teeth kept chomping and mud slobber flew out.
“What do we do, Carnavon?”
“It only seems to want to eat you. Maybe I should let it.”
“You wouldn’t!”
Sadly, Sifuso was right. Gaul Haddar had left me in charge. Honor demanded I do my best to keep his dumb apprentices alive. I drew my pistol, thumbed back the hammer, and fired. I didn’t even need to aim much, it was such a big target. The bullet, unfortunately, did nothing except raise a puff of dust and make my ears ring.
The blast of the gunshot made nearby residents of the Under Slump look our way, because normally when there was random gunfire in this condemned district, it meant there’d been a murder or a gang fight was breaking out. Such activities were proper, normal, respectable things here. Instead, they saw a pile of angry earth crashing about, so the residents calmly began gathering their children and valuables to leave the area. Having dealt with our neighbors a lot over recent weeks, I could even imagine what they were muttering.This used to be a nice street until those damnable wizards moved in and ruined the place.
Telepathic Squalo language images formed in my head. The question was posed in Trax Bloodtrail’s usual enthusiastic and oblivious way: “Hello, my friend. Why is this mound of dirt so upset with you?”
I turned to see the big grey and white fellow had walked up behind me. Squalo were thick, powerfully built, aquatic carnivores from the Elemental Plane of Water, but that didn’t keep him from being very quick and quiet on land. “I don’t know, Trax. Sifuso tried a simple earth spell and it turned into this.”
Trax turned his triangular snout toward the lacertian and stared at Sifuso with his little black eyes. I knew next to nothing about the many kingdoms of the water realm, but it was said Trax’s people were a magical hybrid of man and something called a shark. Trax’s mouth opened just a bit, revealing rows of razor-sharp teeth, as he politely thought at me, “I warned you that lizard folk are troublesome and that you should just let me eat him before he eats one of you.”
Like most people, Sifuso couldn’t understand Squalo mind picture speech, and Squalos can’t speak aloud. I was an oddity in that I’d picked up their undersea thought language rather easily. Trax said it was because my mind was less squishy than that of most land creatures, which was quite the compliment.Everybody else just got weird nonsensical images flashing in their head when Trax tried to communicate with them.
“What did he say?” Sifuso asked.
“Trax said you should be thankful we’re helping clean up your mess.”
“That is a terrible translation and not at all what I meant.”
The wall bulged as the blob threw itself against it again. This unplanned renovation was giving us a front door big enough to drive a carriage through.
“Do you know what this monster is?”
“I do not.”Trax came from a distant empire on an entirely different plane of existence, and he was a monk, not a mage. Him knowing what we were dealing with had been a long shot.
