Slight turn?” Bethany screamed up at Kiel. “I thought you had this!”
“I do!” Kiel shouted. “Just not quite as quickly as I’d hoped!”
The giant shook Kiel and the dragon up and down, then threw them both straight at Bethany, who gasped and covered herself with her two books.
A powerful wind almost knocked her off her feet, and she looked up to find the dragon frantically flapping four new pairs of wings, along with its original two, in order to right itself. All six of the wings glowed red from Kiel’s magic as the dragon came to a halt just a foot above Bethany’s head, then launched back into the sky.
“I told you!” Kiel yelled. “I have this handled!”
The dragon climbed so quickly that it shot right past the giant’s head, flying too high for the giant to actually reach. The giant roared in anger, bent its massive legs, then did maybe the worst possible thing it could do: It jumped right into the air. All ten million pounds of it.
The entire world slowed down as Bethany’s mind exploded. When that thing landed, not only would the town be destroyed from the impact, but people would feel the tremor for hundreds of miles. Not to mention that everyone anywhere close was just going to be completely buried in rock and goblins.
All the blood drained from Bethany’s face as she dropped Emma, then sprinted forward, right to the last place in the world she should be going.
The giant strained to grab Kiel at the top of its jump, its massive hand just missing the dragon. Even free of the giant’s hand, though, there wasn’t much Kiel could do about the giant crashing back to the ground.
But maybe Bethany could.
She stopped directly under the giant’s now plummeting feet and opened her remaining book.
There was no way this would work. No way. She was going to die, and so was everyone in town. This could not work.
She did it anyway.
The giant came crashing down right on top of her. Bethany raised one hand into the air and dropped Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea onto the ground beneath her, stepping onto a page. Then she cringed and waited for the giant to hit.
The moment the giant touched Bethany’s hand, they both went plowing right into the pages of the book, exploding into the middle of the book’s ocean.
The force of the giant’s fall sent both monster and Bethany rocketing into the deep, dark depths of the water, but Bethany didn’t wait around. Without even bothering to figure out which way was up, she immediately jumped out of the book and back to the real world, her clothes soaked, but about as uncrushed as she possibly could have hoped.
Just to make sure, she frantically patted down her arms, legs, and head, then shrieked in absolute joy.
“KIEL!” she shouted. “Did you see that? I did it!”
“Bethany?” Kiel said, landing beside her with his dragon. “You may want to—”
“I just beat the giant!” she shouted. “ME! After it jumped up to catch you, I took the entire thing down! It’s in the middle of a fictional ocean now! I can’t even believe that worked!”
“Bethany?”
“Wow, my heart is racing!” she said, one hand on her chest. “I should have died! We all should have died! That was so amazing!”
Kiel grabbed her by the shoulders, then slowly turned her around.
There, right in front of her, stood the Magister. And behind him were far too many fictional fantasy monsters to count. Griffins. Unicorns. More dragons. Trolls and witches and enormous wolves and knights and huge blobs of monster and too many other things that Bethany didn’t even recognize.
“Kiel,” the Magister said, and Bethany couldn’t tell if he was happy or sad to see his apprentice. “I thought . . . I believed . . . I am glad you have returned. Both of you. You must now be ready to admit the error of your ways, then?”
“Not exactly,” Kiel said. “It’s time to go home, Magi, and put everything back the way we found it here.”
The Magister raised a hand toward Kiel, then dropped it, closing his eyes. He shook his head, and when his eyes opened, any trace of happiness at Kiel’s presence was gone. “No,” he said, his voice low. “We will not be returning to that world. It never truly existed, just as none of these creatures’ worlds did. And to those who would control us, rule us, I say the time has come to take our lives back.” His eyes hardened. “I don’t understand what sort of power the people of this world have, to create us from nothing, then dictate our lives. But I will do everything I can to make sure that comes to a stop right now.”
“What do you mean?” Bethany said, holding her copy of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea out like a sword. “What are you going to do?”
The Magister turned to her. “First, as I promised, I’ll free all fictional creatures I can find. I’ve explained the way things work to my friends, here. And they’d like to speak to their creators, much as I’d still like to.” He held out a hand. “Give me Jonathan Porterhouse, and no harm shall come to you.”
Bethany swallowed hard. “What for?”
“He will accompany any and all other writers into a fictional world, where they will be free to live or die as they can.” He spread his hands. “It is the only way to ensure an end to their power, and seems the fairest way to imprison them. After all, it is no more than they have done to us.”
Bethany’s eyes went wide. “You can’t just send everyone into books! Do you have any idea what would happen?”
“Do you know what happened to me?” the Magister roared. “Fighting a war for the freedom of my people, only to find none of it is real? Let the writers of this world decide if their dystopian futures, their dangerous magic, their monsters and stories of terror are so entertaining once it’s their own life or death they’re living out!”
Her legs shaking, Bethany took a step forward. “I’m not going to let you do this,” she said quietly. “I can’t.”
“Bethany, don’t,” Kiel whispered to her, but she shook her head.
“There’s nothing you can do that I can’t undo,” she told the Magister. “So go ahead. Steal my power some more. I’ll just find a way to put everything back where it belongs, and will keep at it as long as I live.”
“I understand,” the Magister said. “Then I suppose you leave me with no other option.”
“NO!” Kiel shouted, but it was too late. The Magister gestured, and Bethany immediately crumpled to the ground, unmoving.