1.06 – Into the Hornets' Nest

As Carda stepped out of the testing chamber, feeling thoroughly exhausted, he overheard Arthur and Sera in the adjacent monitoring room. Perching the little dragon on his shoulder, he listened as he slowly approached the door.

“It’s completely impossible,” Arthur was saying. “Unless…”

“He has to figure it out on his own.”

“I can at least give him the journal…”

“What journal?” Carda inquired as he entered the room.

“Hmm?” Arthur seemed startled by Carda’s sudden appearance. “Oh, just a journal written by a friend of mine. Now that you know the basics of spatial magic, Joseph’s journal should be able to help you with some of its more… practical applications.”

Carda wondered what that had to do with the snippet of conversation he had overheard, but before he could ask, the little dragon jumped down from his shoulder and scampered over to the control panel that activated various settings for the testing chamber. The lights and buttons seemed to intrigue the tiny creature. “Shiny!” it exulted happily.

“Ah, I see you’ve met Ben,” Arthur chuckled, scooping up the dragon and tickling its belly. “I wondered where he had been hiding…”

“I found him in the clock in the testing chamber. Had quite a stash in there.”

“I’d bet that’s where my good cufflinks went,” Arthur muttered, passing Ben to Sera. “So he was in the clock, eh? That’s a fitting place for an elemental spirit of time to make a home.”

“A who what of huh?” Carda blinked.

“An elemental spirit of time. Time elemental, for short. He’s capable of minor tricks of chronomancy, and as one might guess from the form he’s taken, he mostly uses them for absconding with various bits of ‘treasure’. You might as well take him with you; you never know when his magic might be useful.”

Sera spoke up for the first time since Carda had entered the room. “Speaking of which, we’re going to need some advice for infiltrating the Academy. Carda’s never been in there, after all.”

Carda wondered if that meant that Sera HAD been inside the Academy before, but he let it slide. The issue at hand was more important than Sera’s hidden agenda.

“Okay,” he said. “Tell me everything I need to know.”

“Well, this was unexpected,” Carda commented, staring up at the empty shell of Everett Hall. “Although, now that I know this building is a gateway to the Strider Academy, all those ghost stories about the place are starting to make sense.”

“It might explain the awakening of your powers, as well,” Sera added. “A transdimensional gateway to a place like the Academy is bound to bleed some magical energy. It’s possible that your innate magic reacted to the field around the building.”

Carda nodded, reflecting on the event. It seemed like so long ago already, but it had been, what, two days? If that long? After a lingering perusal of the building, Carda shifted his shoulders to allow his backpack to settle into a more comfortable position. Feeling no more confident than before, he charged forward.

He knew from campus hearsay that the way into the abandoned building was through a basement door that had been left unlocked. Most would find it odd that campus security had never gotten around to locking it, but now that he knew what secrets the building held, it didn’t surprise Carda too much.

Scratches and dents offered plenty of evidence of forced entry around the door jamb, and a quick test of the latch made it clear that the door wouldn’t stay closed unless you nailed it shut. Carda briefly wondered how this had come about. Curious students? Fraternity hazing, perhaps? Or something less obvious? It was hard to say.

Carda pulled a flashlight from his pack, flipped it on, and crept into the darkness. “The gateway is supposed to be on the 13th floor,” Arthur had told him, “but it tends to shift around. Your best bet will be to take Esca with you; she can detect variances in magical energies much better than you can right now. You’ll get better with time, but until then, it never hurts to have backup.”

“Any idea where the gateway is from here, Esca?” Carda whispered, partially from fear of being discovered and partially because he was so nervous the sound of his own voice would have given him a heart attack.

“There’s a lot of free-flowing energy here,” Esca replied softly from inside the backpack. “I can’t be sure until we get a little closer; the readings are too muddled.”

“I was afraid of that,” Carda muttered. He felt around with one foot until he found the beginning of the steps, and crept down them with his flashlight held low. The steps were dusty, and showed footprints. Lots of footprints. “How many people come down here?” he whispered.

“Looks like plenty,” said Sera. “Although it could just be the normal students moving across the world boundary, too.”

They reached the bottom of the stairs and stood in the dark basement. Carda shone his light around, looking for the stairs up into the building. Esca floated just over his shoulder, humming a little. “My, it’s messy in here,” she remarked. “Look at all the boxes.”

“Old textbooks,” said Carda, illuminating a box label. “Talk about boring. My mind feels numb just being near them.” He wished he didn’t sound so nervous.

His beam finally discovered a stairway at the back of the room. The three wove their way through the basement and climbed the steps, trying not to breathe the dust they kicked up. A door at the top stood partly ajar, and the dim light beyond it seemed to ripple, as if shining through water.

“The portal’s up there,” said Esca. “Wow—it emits a ton of power.”

“Are there any people by it?” Carda asked.

“Nope,” said Esca. “But there might be some on the other side.”

They pushed open the door and looked down a long, yellow-painted hallway. The scene rippled like a mirage viewed through heat-shimmer, and human figures walked up and down it.

“Here goes nothing,” said Carda, and stepped through the shimmer.

The shimmer vanished and the hallway became solid. Its occupants snapped into focus. They were bored-looking college students, all with books or backpacks, some moving in small groups. “Esca, get into my backpack,” whispered Carda. The little robot zipped inside, where she made for surprisingly heavy cargo.

“Act casual,” Sera whispered. “We’re supposed to be students like the rest.”

Carda shrugged his shoulders and relaxed his arms, letting them swing. Casual! How could he act casual when he felt like every person in here might jump him at any second? But no one even looked twice at them as they strolled up the hall. They climbed a flight of stairs and arrived at a crossway that reminded him sharply of the one in Xironi’s house: a wide, round space with corridors branching outward like the spokes of a wheel. Unlike that hub-room, however, this counterpart sported a map. It stood in the middle of the room, softly lit from within, like the sort one finds at a mall or amusement park. Carda and Sera stepped close to examine it.

“Where would they keep her?” Carda whispered. “Surely it won’t be marked on a map for the public to see.” The map was filled with ordinary locations like dorms, various laboratory buildings, classroom blocks, and offices for the teachers.

“We may not need the map after all,” Sera whispered back. “Look.”

Carda glanced around the edge of the map frame, then ducked behind it again. Walking past with a binder under one arm was Rayn. Carda kept out of sight behind the map as Rayn turned and walked down the seven o’ clock hallway.

“Let’s follow him!”

“What if he’s just going to class?”

Carda snorted. “As evil as he is, do you think he’s REALLY going to a CLASS?” He ducked out from behind the map and strode after Rayn.

To Carda’s disappointment, Rayn turned and entered a room marked, “Chemistry.” Carda peeked in as the door swung shut. There were desks, other students, and a teacher.

He ignored Sera’s smile and pretended he was just walking to the water fountain down the hall. “Don’t say a word,” he hissed.

They loitered in the hallway for half an hour. Then Rayn’s class streamed out of the classroom. Carda and Sera waited, peering at each face.

Rayn did not come out.

After everyone had gone, Carda opened the door and peeked inside. The room was empty.

“Esca, are you picking up anybody in here?”

“Nobody but us,” she replied, muffled in the backpack. “There are some residual spatial ripples by the back wall, though.”

A ten-foot-wide poster listing the table of elements covered most of the back wall. Carda was bemused to see that this table included several extra layers with elements nobody on Earth knew about. Sera watched as Carda passed his hands up and down in front of the poster. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Carda said sheepishly. “I thought maybe I could feel some magic here or something.”

“Let me!” said Esca, zipping out of the backpack. She hovered back and forth over the poster, for all the world like a self-powered stud finder. She stopped over Quadranium. “Here,” she said. “There’s something here, like a door.”

Carda touched the poster with his left hand. Instantly the poster swelled outward and formed a door handle with the text stretched over it. He grabbed hold and turned.

A door opened in the wall, revealing a metal staircase that spiraled tightly downward. “Bingo,” said Carda.

Suddenly his backpack lurched, nearly knocking him into the stairwell. A small black reptile launched itself into the air, hit the floor on all fours, and galloped out the classroom door. “BEN!” exclaimed Carda. He made to start after the little scamp, but Sera grabbed his arm.

“Wait, don’t go. You’ll attract more attention if you follow him.”

“But he’s a time elemental in a school of space mages!” Carda protested.

“He’s also lived in people’s houses, pilfering shiny things, for years. He’ll be all right. He’ll find us when he’s ready, I’m sure.”

Carda growled in frustration, aimed a few mental curses at Ben, and turned back to the staircase.

Their footsteps sounded alarmingly loud on the metal steps. Carda tried to descend on tiptoe, but it made little difference. The stairs seemed designed to give away anyone who might try sneaking down them. Carda halted at ceiling level of the room below. He knelt and peered into the room. It was a large room and as long as the entire building above it. Filling most of the room was a machine.

It reminded Carda of a central heating unit. A couple hundred pipes snaked down the walls and fed into a central block. Atop this block was a rectangular platform with straps and bracelets. Someone was obviously meant to be strapped into this thing. But what did it do? Carda squinted at it, but the pipes didn’t remind him of anything. Maybe some kind of torture device?

A door at the far end of the room was ajar, the he could hear muffled voices beyond it. Judging by the sound, the speakers were moving closer.

Carda stood up and found himself at eye level with an air conditioning vent. He held his left hand over its screws and forced space to revolve quickly in a tiny area around them. They unscrewed and popped out into his hand. He pulled the vent cover off and laid it quietly on the step beside him.

“You’re not serious,” whispered Sera. “That conduit is a foot wide!”

“No problem at all, if you’re a Strider,” said Carda with more confidence than he felt. He put an arm around Sera, grabbed their personal space with his left hand, and squeezed.

They shrank to a foot tall. The part that Carda hadn’t anticipated was feeling like he was being squeezed in his own fist. He and Sera both exhaled as if they had been punched in the stomach, and it was hard to draw in a breath afterward. “Quick,” choked Carda, “into the vent!” He gave Sera a boost to reach the opening, which was now a few feet above them. She scrambled up into it. Carda stepped back, made a running leap, caught the edge, and clambered up behind her.

Inside, the duct was cold and dusty. A light shone into it from another vent further down. They hurried toward it, their tiny feet sounding like scampering mice, and peered out.

They were just in time to see Rayn and an older man walk in, shoving Xironi ahead of them. Her hands were tied behind her back, and her mouth was taped shut. Her ears were pinned back, and her tail switched angrily as they marched her up to the machine. She struggled as they forced her to lie back against the table, but the older man raised a hand and pinned her with an atmosphere stasis. Xironi froze as the air seemed to turn to stone around her. She glared at the older man and worked her own power against his. In a few seconds she broke the stasis, but by then they had her arms and legs locked into the restraints. The older man reached down and tore the tape off her mouth. Carda and Sera winced.

Xironi hissed, very catlike, and snarled, “You won’t get away with this. Carda will figure out where I am, and then there’ll be Hell to pay!”

“Oh please,” said the older man. “Lay off the clichés. They don’t suit you. Your little friend Carda is such a pathetic excuse for a Strider, I didn’t even consider inviting him to the Academy. Why not sic your grandfather on me? That would be much more interesting.”

“Even I don’t know where he is, Octavius,” spat Xironi. “And if you think you can get away with torturing me—”

“Oh, this isn’t a torture device,” said Octavius. He swept his arm grandly over the machine. “This is the Apparatus for the Containment and Extraction of Souls. The ACES. Rayn, care to explain?”

Rayn had lost his cocky attutude. He was pale as he looked at the machine, then down at Xironi. “It strips the soul out of your body,” he told her. He hesitated, licked his lips. “But it doesn’t kill you. Your heart still beats, but you’re not in your body anymore. You’re… wherever we put you.”

Xironi stared at him. “I don’t know why I ever cared for you, Mistral.”

Rayn flinched and flushed, wounded but a little angry. Octavius laughed. Carda looked hard at the headmaster, memorizing his face. A tall, grey-haired man, probably in his fifties. A little saggy around the waist, but with broad shoulders, like an athlete gone to seed.

“Ah, puppy love!” Octavius grinned. “I daresay we see enough of it around here. The offer still stands, Xironi. Tell us how to find Arthur, and we’ll take you out of the machine. We’ll even send you home with a full apology.”

“Go find a really high cliff, and take a flying leap,” said Xironi.

Carda silently cheered.

Octavius’s smile vanished. He gazed at Xironi with chilly contempt. “Defiant to the last, I see. Very well, you’ve made your choice. Rayn, it’s time I showed you how to work the controls.” Octavius walked out of Carda’s sight, and they heard a door open and close.

Rayn lingered beside Xironi. “Please,” he pled in an undertone, “just say you’ll do it. Don’t let him take your soul.”

Xironi looked up at him, and her lower lip trembled. Carda’s heart jerked at the sight.

“Rayn, I can’t sacrifice Grandpa to you people. And you can’t hurt my soul—it’s in the Creator’s keeping. So just… just go away and leave me alone.”

“Xironi, I…” Rayn trailed off and grabbed his black hair with both hands, as if he would like to tear it out. His voice cracked in distress. “You don’t know what they’re planning. What they’ll do with your body. Do you know why they take souls?”

“Rayn, come along,” called Octavius.

Rayn blanched and quickly whispered something that Carda couldn’t hear. Xironi’s eyes widened. “Octavius is one sick man,” she hissed back at him, “and if you work for him, you’re as sick as he is.”

Rayn had no answer for that. He turned and hurried toward Octavius and the control room.

The machine kicked on with a bass hum that shook the room. The air duct around Sera and Carda buzzed faintly as the metal quivered. Carda felt his bones rattle, and clenched his teeth to keep them from chattering. What was inside of those pipes that could make such a sound? Down on the restraining bed, Xironi shook her head once, twice, as if the hum bothered her, too.

It grew louder and louder, echoing and reechoing through the duct until Carda could hardly bear it. The machine’s power built and built until the walls shivered and groaned with the vibration, and Xironi began to whimper, trying to cover her ears and unable to move her hands.

Space changed. The air above Xironi rippled and bulged as if something was pressing through into the third dimension. A metallic form shone inside the distortion.

“Oh gosh,” Carda muttered, “the machine is on multiple dimension planes.” He’d suddenly realized the thing with the pipes was only part of it. The real machine was much, much bigger, and occupied space not under the school at all.

The distortion bubble swelled to cover Xironi. She stopped struggling and stared up into it. Then her muscles went slack and the life left her eyes. The distortion shrank and dissolved, and a long metal object appeared on the bed beside Xironi’s body.

“They turned her soul into a sword?” whispered Carda in disbelief. He stared at Xironi’s limp body, and at the sword beside her. A katana. Part of him recoiled in revulsion, but another part of him admired Xironi for having the sort of soul that transformed into a weapon.

Rayn dashed into sight and bent over Xironi. He checked her pulse, felt her breathing, then examined the katana without touching it.

“Well?” came Octavius’s voice.

“It worked, sir,” said Rayn. “She is alive, and her soul is encased in the sword.”

“I wonder why the machine chose that form?” said Octavius, striding into view.

Behind him walked another man, all in black, his feet making no sound on the polished concrete. “Impressive,” said the newcomer. Carda’s flesh crawled. Dimetrius. What was he doing here?

Dimetrius lifted the katana casually in one hand. Carda’s fists clenched. Put her down, creep.

“It used to take my acolytes and me an hour to do this,” said Demetrius, tilting the katana so the light shone on the blade. “You did it in eight minutes, and what’s more, didn’t have to harm the body at all. Sometimes we had to bleed them out, and of course the body was useless afterwards…”

Rayn stood behind Demetrius, out of Octavius’s line of sight, but Carda saw him clearly. Rayn’s face was greenish white, and he looked as if he would have liked to jump Demetrius and strangle him on the spot. Carda hoped Rayn would try it and save Carda the trouble.

“Well!” exclaimed Dimetrius, tossing the katana carelessly onto the table, “I’ll leave you two to clean up. I have other business to attend to.” He waved his right hand in a circle. There was a flicker of green fire, and he vanished. Strider teleport. So Dimetrius was a strider. Somehow, it figured.

Octavius unbuckled Xironi’s restraints, and he laid a hand on her chest. Her body vanished in another flicker of green. Rayn walked out and returned carrying a white cloth. He picked up the katana very carefully with it, without letting his skin touch the metal. He wrapped the katana in the cloth, and Strider-teleported it as well.

Then Rayn and Octavius departed up the spiral staircase. Octavius was saying something about lunch, and Rayn looked positively ill. Neither noticed the open air vent.

Once the door closed overhead, Carda and Sera raced back to the open vent and jumped out. Carda finally released the spatial shrink, and they both popped back to their normal size. Then they both had to sit down as the compressed blood exploded into their extremities. “You could give us anuerysms,” said Sera, rubbing her temples. She touched the back of Carda’s head, and his own headache faded.

“I’d rather get Xironi’s soul back,” he said. “I feel fine; let’s go.”

At the top of the stairs, Carda regained his bearings and nearly sprinted out into the hallway. There was no sign of either Rayn or Octavius.

Okay, Carda, think fast. This is a school full of people who can manipulate space. A school run by a madman who has just sucked the soul out of your friend. How do you find someone like that?

“Excuse me…” Sera’s voice cut into Carda’s thoughts. She was addressing a passing student. “Can you tell me were the Chancellor’s office is? I have a question for him.”

Direct, and bordering on breaking their cover, but effective. “Well, his office is in Sector Three, but if you wish to speak with him, I just saw him over in Sector Seven a minute ago. He and Acolyte Mistral were escorting a new convert into the Chamber of Great Blessing.”

Escorting a new convert? Chamber of Great Blessing? Was this a school or a cult temple? Carda didn’t bother trying to figure out this new wrinkle; Xironi was his only reason for being in this crazy place. He and Sera half-jogged back to the central hub of the school, then into Sector Seven.

“Well, there are Rayn and Octavius…” Sera whispered a moment later.

“…But where’s Xironi?” Carda replied, finishing the thought.

The “new convert” the student had been talking about was not unconscious, nor Felician, nor even female. It was a young man, apparently about Carda’s age, with blond hair and blue eyes. He was talking very animatedly to Octavius and Rayn about something that Carda couldn’t comprehend, with terms such as “transmutation” and “elixir” popping into hearing on occasion.

Carda and Sera slowed down so as not to overtake them. Octavius and Rayn were smiling and nodding as the young man chattered, then Octavius pointed down the hall and motioned for the young man to wait for them. Rayn and Octavius continued walking down the hall, talking in lowered voices once they were out of earshot of the newcomer. They turned a corner and vanished. Carda and Sera slowed to a stop, conveniently next to another drinking fountain. They waited there, knowing that Rayn and Octavius would return… and also praying that they wouldn’t be recognized.

The young man, meanwhile, glanced about, apparently looking for anyone who might be watching. Carda and Sera avoided eye contact. When he was certain he wouldn’t be spotted, the young man pulled a small vial of blue liquid from his sleeve, popped it open, and downed the contents in one gulp. He took another look around the hallway, then headed straight for a blank section of wall… and walked through it.

Carda blinked. “Did you just see—?”

“Yeah. Must be a wall of illusion there,” Sera nodded as they headed down the hall for the spot where the young man had vanished.

“How did he know it was there, though? Better yet, why is it there?”

“I think we’re going to find out whether we want to or not,” Sera replied. “Look.”

Carda followed Sera’s gaze and resisted the urge to curse aloud. Rayn and Octavius had just come back around the corner. They hadn’t spotted Carda and Sera yet; Octavius was lecturing Rayn, and Rayn’s head was down, staring at the floor.

Without caring about where they would end up, Carda grabbed Sera’s arm and pulled her through the fake wall. A burst of cold air hit them as they passed into the space behind it. Rayn and Octavius passed them by, never having noticed their presence. They seemed to have forgotten about their “convert” in the interim as well.

Carda breathed a sigh of relief just before he was tackled from behind.

Kicking free from his attacker, Carda wished for a weapon and found that he had just summoned a staff to his hands. Carda didn’t have time to question where the staff came from or why it seemed to respond to him so easily, as his attacker came at him again.

A sidestep, parry, and trip, and the young man they had followed from the hallway was pinned by one end of Carda’s staff. “This is your Great Blessing, Octavius?” he was screaming. “Your blessing is a fate worse than death! I want none of it!”

“Hey, calm down, buddy, and keep your voice down,” Carda shot back. “I’m not Octavius. Thank the Creator for that small favor…”

The young man perked up at that. “Oh! Oh. Heh. Sorry. And here I was all set to expose the man as a sham. You mind letting me up?”

“You mind telling me who you are, why you’re here, how you knew where this room was, and what the blazes you were yelling about just now?”

“Hey, that’s not fair. I should only have to answer one of those questions before you let me up. Equivalent exchange, pal.”

“Ah, that explains some things,” Sera cut in, having observed the entire scuffle. “You must be an alchemist. That would explain the vial we saw you drink.”

“Oh, you saw that, huh?” The young man seemed embarassed about getting caught, but not much else. “Elixir of True Sight. Sees right through illusions and trickery. Very handy if you’re going to sneak around in this place; the Strider Academy is full of stuff Octavius wouldn’t want you to see.”

“Like this room,” Carda guessed, relaxing his guard and glancing around. They stood in a dimly-lit room the size of a warehouse. The floor and walls were stainless steel, and every few feet there stood a coffin-shaped metal box with a fogged glass dome.

“Thanks. Anyway, my name is Lucas. I was looking for some way to prove that Octavius is running more than just a school here, and I think I’ve found my proof.”

“What is this place?” Sera asked. “It gives me a bad feeling.”

“Looks like cold storage to me,” Carda answered. “These metal boxes are regulating something; probably temperature.”

“Not just temperature,” Lucas added darkly. “Heart rate, blood pressure, everything that a human body would need to stay healthy in a comatose state.”

“Wait, you mean…?”

Lucas nodded. “I had just taken a peek into that case over there when you showed up. The glass isn’t fogged over, so I could see inside. There’s a girl in there, completely unconscious.”

Carda stared at him for a moment. Pieces of the puzzle were starting to fit together in a way that made his skin crawl. “But wait, if the glass isn’t fogged over…”

“My guess is they put her in there just a few minutes ago at most,” Lucas shrugged.

“Xironi!” Carda and Sera exclaimed in unison. They rushed to the machine Lucas had pointed out, and sure enough, resting in a stasis chamber, lay Xironi’s soulless shell. Seeing her so helpless gave Carda joint feelings of sorrow and rage. He looked around for a way to open the lid of the chamber.

“It’s no good,” Lucas commented as he joined them. “I’ve seen this design before… It only opens if the person inside wakes up on their own. It was created for long-term coma patients.”

“You have a very good grasp of technology for an alchemist,” Sera commented.

“It comes with being from Atlantis,” Lucas shrugged.

Carda and Sera stared at him for a moment, then went back to examining the stasis chamber. At this point, learning that someone had lived in Atlantis was par for the course.

Something tugged at Carda’s memory. “The sword. Where’s the katana?”

They looked around and spotted a weapon case along one wall. Carda rushed over to it and glanced over the blades one by one. This one was a scimitar, that one was rusty, this one was the wrong color— There. The hint of green in the blade matched Xironi’s eyes, and it appeared to have been mounted recently.

“It’s locked,” he muttered, but then his gaze dropped to the staff he still held in one hand. A grin slowly spread across his face.

“Uh oh, I know that smile,” Sera said. “What are you planning?”

“In case of emergency…” Carda replied as he tossed the staff into the air, caught it at one end, and brought the entire length of the staff down onto the glass pane covering the weapons. The crash of shattering glass echoed throughout the cold storage room.

“How is that going to help?” Lucas inquired, looking around nervously to see if anyone had heard the noise.

“You said that the only way this stasis chamber will open is if Xironi wakes up,” Carda replied, cautiously picking Xironi’s sword out of the glass-fragment-coated velvet lining. “Well, the only way she’s going to wake up if if someone returns her soul to her body.”

Lucas nodded without thinking. Then, after a moment, “Wait, WHAT? Her SOUL was sucked out of her and put into that sword?”

“I watched them do it,” Carda answered, the disgust and hatred evident in his voice. “And because I watched them do it, I might have a way to undo it. Stand back.”

As Sera and Lucas followed his directions, Carda dismissed his staff and placed both hands on the katana’s hilt. “Sera, you recognized the man wearing black, didn’t you?”

“We’ve met,” Sera answered flatly.

“He’s been trying to get me to join him for a while now. Offering all kinds of promises… Power. Wealth. He said he could give me anything.”

“He says that to everybody. It looks like Octavius fell for it.”

“Octavius must’ve wanted to believe it. I never did. I didn’t want to think that I got to where I was because of anyone but myself.”

“What are you trying to tell me, Carda?”

“I’m trying to say that everything from the past few days has led me to this point. It’s time I made my decision.”

“And what have you decided?”

“If Dimetrius really knew what I wanted… then he obviously wouldn’t have done this to Xironi. He thinks he can take a life so casually.”

“It’s his way.”

“And it’s not mine. If he thinks he can take someone from me, then I think it’s only fair for me to take them back.” And before anyone could respond, Carda plunged the sword down, piercing the lid of the stasis chamber and lodging firmly in Xironi’s chest.

“Are you crazy?” Lucas yelped, but as he leaped forward to stop Carda, Sera held him back. “No, it’s okay, look. Look at his hands.”

Lucas took a second look, and saw that Carda’s left hand was ablaze in green fire. The sword shimmered with a golden light, and seemed to be transparent.

“You see?” Sera explained. “He’s shifted the blade out of phase with this reality. It’s how they took her soul out, and it’s the only way he knows to put it back in.”

As they watched, the light seemed to filter downward, out of the sword and into the stasis chamber, wrapping Xironi’s body in a golden aura. Beads of sweat began to drip down Carda’s face.

“I just hope he can hold out long enough to finish the job,” Sera added.

Minutes ticked by. The longer Carda held his spacial control, the more he seemed to be struggling. Sera knew that, outside of Arthur’s test chamber, this was the most draining thing Carda had ever done with his spatial power. She reached forward to give him a healing hand, but checked herself. If Carda relaxed, he might phase the sword back into reality too soon, killing Xironi with a blade to the heart.

Paradoxically, Carda’s fatigue was the only thing keeping him focused.

Nearly twenty minutes in, the light wrapped around Xironi’s body suddenly vanished, as if her body had soaked it in like water into a dry sponge. Her eyelids slammed open and she drew a gasping breath. Immediately Carda yanked the sword out, relaxing his spatial control once the blade was clear of the stasis chamber.

The chamber registered the spike in vital signs and, true to its design, cracked open with a whoosh of hydraulics. Xironi lay there, blinking and looking bewildered. “Wha…?”

Carda couldn’t help his grin. It spread over his face and he couldn’t stop it. “Are you okay?” he asked, helping her to sit up.

“I feel… like I just had surgery,” said Xironi. “Blech, I’m all dizzy. Did they take my soul?”

“Yeah,” said Carda, “and I just put it back in.”

Sera, Carda and Lucas helped Xironi climb out of the stasis chamber. Sera touched her with healing power, but Xironi’s body was technically unharmed. It was the connection that her soul made to her body that was still injured, and Sera could not heal that. Esca whipped out of Carda’s backpack and hovered around Xironi, exclaiming, “Miss Xironi! You’re alive! How do you feel? Okay? Are you sick? Why can’t you walk?”

Xironi waved away Esca and looked at Lucas. “Who are you?”

“I’m Lucas,” he said. “I’m here to expose Octavius’s operation.”

“Oh, a reporter?” said Xironi. “That’s nice. Let’s go home, Carda—I just want to sleep.”

As they turned toward the illusion-wall, they heard a scrabbling of claws, and Ben leaped through the space. “Shiny!” he exclaimed. He clutched a glowing orange crystal, and he swarmed up Carda’s pantleg, carrying the crystal in his mouth. Carda yelped as Ben’s claws dug into his skin. A second later Ben arrived on Carda’s shoulder, held up the crystal, and informed him, “Shiny.”

“Where did you get that?” asked Carda.

Ben shrugged. “Shiny.”

“Looks like somebody’s paperweight,” said Lucas. “Likes shiny things, huh?”

“You have no idea,” said Carda. “Let’s go.”

They stepped out through the illusion, Carda holding Xironi’s left arm, Sera her right. Lucas trotted after them, wanting to help now that he was involved. Which was a good thing, because Carda’s strength was gone. They walked two yards before he stumbled. Lucas dove forward. “Here man, let me carry her. You’re beat.”

Carda lacked the energy to argue. Lucas took Xironi’s arm, and Carda walked behind them with his hands on Xironi’s shoulders. Esca buzzed along, keeping pace beside Xironi’s right ear. Ben perched on Carda’s shoulder, still clinging to his ‘shiny’. Students stared at them as they walked down the hallway. Somebody called, “Need help?”

“We’re fine,” Carda called back. “Just taking her to the nurse’s office.”

“Just so you know,” Lucas muttered, “the nurse’s office is back the other way.”

Even so, they made it all the way back to the hallway hub before anything happened. That was when a man dressed in black emerged from an office, started up the hallway toward them, and stopped dead. Carda’s heart lurched. Dimetrius. They all stopped. Lucas whispered, “Who’s this guy?”

“The dean,” whispered Carda.

Lucas said something obscene in Atlantean.

Dimetrius strode forward. “What do you think you’re doing? That girl is subject to an experiment by her own consent and cannot be removed from the school!”

“I never consented to anything,” Xironi growled.

As the man in black moved closer, Esca dove into the backpack, and Ben whimpered and ducked behind Carda’s head, winding his tail around Carda’s throat for support. Carda gagged.

Dimetrius walked up very close and hissed, “You have a lot of nerve, Carda, waltzing onto my turf, stealing lives that are rightfully mine.”

“Her life was never yours in the first place,” said Carda, wishing he sounded more forceful. It was hard to sound forceful with a lizard’s tail wrapped around his Adam’s apple. “Now I’m taking her back.”

“I don’t think so,” said Dimetrius with a half-smile. Then he noticed Lucas. Black fury contorted his face and his eyes seemed to flash red. “And you—you will never leave this place alive!”

Dimetrius slashed his hand at Lucas and a line of purple fire cut through the air. But it hit resistance a foot from Lucas’s face and splashed harmlessly around him. Dimetrius’s eyes darted to Sera, then Carda. “You…” He fired more purple fire, this time at Carda. Again the fire was deflected.

There was a moment of silence. Dimetrius stood panting, fists clenched, glaring at them. The group stood still, not knowing what to do or what might happen next.

“I don’t have time for this,” said Dimetrius, forcing a smile. He snapped his fingers. “Kill them all.”

The lights dimmed as black fog swirled into the hallway. Carda, Xironi and Sera gasped. Lucas shot back, “Yeah, you and what army?” and pushed them forward, into the blackness. Creatures were beginning to swarm out of it now—dark masses of nothingness with unpleasent spiky ends.

But the black things could not touch them any more than Dimetrius could. Like Dimetrius’s spells, they bounced off an invisible shield around the four. Carda didn’t think they would have made it without Lucas. He was the first to call, “I see the portal!”

A moment later they emerged in a dusty, empty room of Everett Hall. The portal shimmered behind them, and a second later, the black shadows phased through in hot pursuit.

“We’re on the thirteenth floor,” said Carda, glancing out a window. “The portal moves around randomly, doesn’t it?”

“Figures,” said Sera. “Carda, they’re all coming through.”

“My house key,” murmured Xironi. “We need my house key.”

Carda reached into his pocket and pulled it out. “I have it right here.” Then it dawned on him. “I can put this key into any door and open it to your house, can’t I?”

Xironi nodded.

Carda dashed to the door leading out of the room, stuck in the key, and turned it. The door opened, revealing the front room of Xironi’s house. They all dashed through, and Carda slammed it behind them.

Lucas and Sera collapsed to the floor and let Xironi sink to her knees. “I thought I was done for,” she said, rubbing her forehead. “They would have taken my soul, because it’s still so weak. I could feel them.”

“Feel who?” asked Lucas.

They looked at him.

“My True Sight potion wears off after twenty minutes,” said Lucas. “Was something after us? Besides the maniac in black, of course.”

“And here I thought you were really brave,” said Carda, shaking his head.

“Nothing like ignorance to give you courage,” shrugged Lucas cheerfully. “It’d be nice to know why that guy seemed to hate me so much, though.”

“Why does Dimetrius hate anybody?” Carda shrugged. “C’mon, let’s get Xironi into bed.”

Xironi’s room was in the eleven o’ clock wing, down a long hall and up a flight of stairs. She was asleep before they got her there. They laid her on the bed and covered her with a blanket, then retreated to the central room. Ben finally let go of Carda and slithered down his shoulder, where he landed on a couch cushion and curled up, crooning, “Shiny,” to his orange crystal. Esca had stayed to watch over Xironi, which left Sera, Lucas and Carda alone together.

Carda dropped onto the couch beside Ben and sighed. Sera walked into the kitchen and rustled around in the pantry, and Lucas walked around and around the hub room, peering down each hallway. “How big is this house, exactly?” he asked.

“Oh, fair size,” said Carda. “It’s multi-dimensional.”

“How does anybody build a multi-dimensional house?” asked Lucas, finally sitting down on the opposide couch.

“Xironi’s grandpa did it,” said Carda. “So what were you doing in the Academy, anyway?”

“Looking for dirt on Octavius, like I said” Lucas grinned. “His Multiversal Guide people have been hitting Atlantis pretty hard, and I wanted to show everybody that it’s all a scam. And boy, did I! I should have brought a light-etch, though. I wasn’t expecting to find soul-stripped bodies in a freezer.”

Sera returned with sandwiches and chips. Carda took a sandwich, but Lucas stared at them on the plate. “Stacks of bread and meat?”

“It’s a sandwich,” said Sera. “Try it.”

Lucas did so, and his eyes lit up. “Genius! This is one culinary invention I’ll definitely have to introduce back home!”

“So,” said Carda between bites of his own, “if you’re an alchemist, why were you doing detective work?”

“Because my day job is at a news announcement business,” said Lucas. “I’ll never get my alchemist’s band because I don’t practice proper alchemy. Turning lead into gold and all that.”

“What do you do?” asked Sera.

Lucas puffed out his chest. “I’m a culinary alchemist!”

Carda squinted at him. “You engineer… food?”

“Yes! All new types of food. It’s like cooking, but with magic.” Lucas paused for a bite of sandwich, and chewed it reflectively. “One time I thought I had produced a culinary philosopher’s stone. But I had only burned the truffles.”

Carda tried not to laugh and choked on a piece of bread. As he coughed, Sera said, “I wonder why Dimetrius had it in for you, Lucas. He’s been trying to recruit Carda for years.”

“I’ve never laid eyes on the guy before,” said Lucas. “But those Multiversal Guide people have sure visited me a lot. Me, I believe in the God Shaddai, and that’ll never change. They always got annoyed when I told them that. Finally I went to one of their recruitment fairs and found out where their portal to the Temple was. Turns out it’s also a school. Boy, I was lost for a while. Good thing I had a couple of True Sight potions on me. As a bonus, they also whiten teeth!” He flashed another smile.

“He sent a whole swarm of shadow spirits after us,” said Sera. “But they couldn’t touch us. I wasn’t using my power at all. Carda, were you?”

Carda had recovered from his coughing fit and was drinking a can of soda. He put it down and said, “No, not me. I’m completely drained from giving Xironi her soul back. I couldn’t have done a thing.”

“Hmm,” said Sera, and her eyes fell on Ben’s crystal. She rose and walked over to him. He growled at her and wound his tail protectively around it. “It’s okay,” she said gently, “I just want to look at it for a second.”

Ben had heard that line before, and clung to the crystal even tighter. Sera gave up and returned to her chair. “Maybe that crystal had some sort of magical warding properties. We won’t know until we can look at it more closely.”

“Maybe you should stay here for a few days, Luke,” said Carda. “If Dimetrius is after you, it’s best to lie low for a while.”

“Fine with me,” said Lucas. “I took two weeks’ vacation, and I’ve never been to this world before. Does Xironi have a cook?”

“Nope, the position’s open. Want it?”

“Heck yes.”