“We have to keep going. They’ll meet us at the Lair,” Charlie said.
If they were still alive. “Which way to the Warden’s office?” Kallie asked.
“I know the way. Follow me,” I said.
I pulled on Oberi’s mane, and she turned to the left. Kallie changed into a wolf, and faced Marcus as she said, “Hop on.”
Marcus gave a snicker, then stroked her pointed ears. “Such a pretty girl, aren’t you? You’remypretty girl.”
Rishi gave a surly growl, and Kallie stumbled backward, like she didn’t know what to think. Marcus had the biggest shit-eating grin on his face as he pulled himself onto Kallie’s back, then buried his face in her fur.
“I think he’s lost his marbles,” Charlie mumbled. “Awesometiming.”
“Well, he’s been through a lot today. We all have. I don’t blame him for not being able to keep it together,” I replied. I urged Oberi into a canter, and she surged down the hallway as the rest followed.
The Warden’s office wasn’t far from Cellblock 9, so I figured we’d be there in less than a few minutes. But as we rounded one corner into another, I realized that instead of the lane that led to the office, we were in the corridor that was by Commissary.
“What the hell? This isn’t where we were two seconds ago!” I shouted.
“Then where are we?” Charlie asked. Marcus slid off Kallie’s back, and she transformed again, wandering around to observe where we were.
“We started near Cellblock 9, which is only a block away from the Warden’s office, but now we’re near the cafeteria, which is clear on the other side of campus!” I complained. “How the hell did we get here?”
Kallie walked backward, then ran her fingers over what appeared to be thin air. A shimmering veil formed before her, a piece of nearly translucent fabric fluttering in the wind. “He made fae guards change some of the hallways into traps,” Kallie said. “So students will go through them trying to escape, and it’ll put them in different parts of the prison than when they came. It’s meant to confuse, and to test who’s smart enough to figure out they’re being misled.”
“He wants us to be like rats in a cage,” Charlie growled.
A laugh bubbled out from Marcus’ throat. “Tricky, tricky. He makes games, we break them.”
“Can you break the traps?” I asked Kallie.
“Absolutely. Give me a second.” Kallie placed her hand flat against a wall, and there was a high-pitched sound, one that sharply rose, then lowered, in pitch. The shimmering veil vaporized into mist, and Kallie brushed off her hands on her jeans. “There. That should’ve broken all of them, wherever they are around the prison.”
“We still have to go all the way back, and now we know the Warden is setting traps,” I grumbled. “Who knows what we’ll find on the way there.”
“Maybe we can take a shortcut,” Kallie offered. I turned Oberi down the hallway, and we trotted up to the cafeteria. Kallie went to take a step down another path. “Should we go this way, or—”
Our debate was solved when, without warning, Marcus kicked down the cafeteria doors. “DING DONG, MOTHERFUCKERS!”
The cafeteria was an absolute beehive for guards. Hundreds of them swarmed around the area, waiting on the Warden’s orders.
Marcus stood in the doorway. Dark power swirled around his form, and it made the entire room go dim. Wisps of purple and blue magic traveled up his legs and down his arms as his curls fell into one eye. He gave a twisted smile.
“Hello, boys. Let’s play a game.” Marcus hissed. He conjured a battle orb, hovering it in his palm as he took a ragged step toward the guards.
“Oh, look, shiny!” Marcus proclaimed as he bounced the battle orb in his hand. “You wanna know what happens when I make this goboom?”
The guards raised their rifles, but Marcus tossed the battle orb with a yell, and it sailed to the middle of the room. Tables and benches went flying as an explosion erupted. Kallie threw up a shield to protect us, and I watched as bodies were tossed against it in the blast.
A massive crater was left in the center of the cafeteria. The guards who’d survived were lying on the floor, staring up at Marcus in a mixture of terror and respect.
“What the hell are you?” a guard asked in fear.
“I’m what happens when you allow a theater kid to survive!” Marcus conjured more battle orbs and tossed them around the room in quick succession. Guards put up shields and responded with magic of their own, throwing spells around the room that blew chunks off of concrete pillars and made holes in the wall.
The explosion had caught the attention of other guards, who swarmed in from different entrances. Kallie raced forward to join Marcus. She grasped his hand, and a dark stream of magic wrapped around them tightly as they joined their powers with simultension.
The two of them didn’t even have tospeak.It was marvelous. I watched as their combined powers shot out at a dozen guards. The spell squeezed their torsos, and the guards’ screams of pain morphed into withered old cries of desperation. I observed as the strong bodies of the guards lost their muscular form, becoming aged and bent-over. Lines showed on their once-clear faces, changing their features from young to elderly. Kallie’s time magic had merged with Marcus’ death abilities, and they’d used it to physically age the guards in moments. Years of their life passed by in seconds, until the wrinkled faces of the guards dissolved as they turned into skeletons, then poofed into nothing but dust.
