The tower seemed higher than it had any right to be, considering it’d just been created out of thin air within the last day. Bethany climbed as silently as she could, hoping that the Magister wasn’t using magic to listen for intruders.
Each room she passed, she stopped to check for books. The Magister seemed to have re-created his tower exactly, so instead of anything useful and literary, most rooms were filled with magical experiments, weird time changes where everything happened backward, or worst of all, the room of ten thousand smells. (The less said about that last one, the better. Jonathan Porterhouse apparently liked his magic quirky.)
She had the location spell still, of course. It could probably locate the perfect thing to use against the Magister, just as easily as it might find her father. But after seeing her father, even the version in the Magister’s fake story . . . she couldn’t. Not her one chance to find him. With everything happening, she had to hold on to this one thing, keep this one thing safe, for herself. No matter what.
After exploring fourteen floors up from the dungeon, Bethany finally opened the door to what looked like a room the size of a closet, only it turned out to extend farther than she could see. And every single inch was filled with books.
“Finally,” she whispered, and walked inside, leaving the door just a bit open so Kiel would know where to lead all the fictional creatures the Magister had freed already.
She walked into the room full of shelves, pushing her way past random piles of books on the floor, as well. Now that she was here, how was she ever going to sort through all of these? Somehow, not only did she need to find a weapon to use against the Magister, but she also had to take care of all those monsters in one fell swoop. Assuming Kiel made it back with them all.
What was she talking about? He’d been eaten alive by a dragon, then walked out of its mouth making jokes. If anything, he’d be here sooner rather than later.
In spite of everything, Bethany smiled to herself. Be more fictional. Somehow, Kiel actually made things fun, even in the worst of all possible situations. Which they were clearly in.
She passed through the shelves, scanning the titles as fast as she could. Every so often she’d pull a book down, making a pile for later use, but nothing she found would do much against a horde of mythical creatures.
Wait. They were all creatures from myth and fantasy. Where were the monsters and aliens from science fiction? Maybe unconsciously, the Magister was still avoiding science. No matter how much he hated the idea, part of him was still the same character from the Kiel Gnomenfoot books.
A roar from below brought Bethany back on track, but at least she had an idea for what to use against the Magister’s army. And now that she knew what she was looking for, the search went much quicker. Two shelves later, she found something that might do just fine.
After a quick jump into and back out of the book, she was back on the stairs with a pile of books, taking them two by two as loud footsteps pounded up a few floors below. “This way, you made-up idiots!” Kiel yelled. “Catch me if you can, which you can’t, because you’re so poorly written!”
She stopped three floors up from the library, then froze, trying hard to hear the moment Kiel reached the library door. He must have found it, because she heard him yell, “In here! First one who eats me gets a punch in the gut from the inside!”
And then Bethany heard the enormous crackling of electricity she’d been listening for, followed by complete silence.
Poor Kiel. Still, he should be fine, at least for a few minutes. She waited, just to be sure there weren’t any stray fictional creatures still wandering around, then turned and continued up the tower.
Carrying a pile of books made the climb to the top take even longer than she’d have thought. Thankfully, all the noise below hadn’t seemed to disturb the Magister, as the enormous wooden door at the very top remained closed. It occurred to Bethany that this was the exact same door Dr. Verity had opened what felt like years ago at this point when she and Owen had visited the sixth Kiel Gnomenfoot book.
And now she was Dr. Verity, coming to face the Magister. Ugh.
As her hand touched the doorknob, she heard a voice from inside, and froze. “You’re not from this world, boy,” the Magister was saying. “No more than I am. But they control you here. They force your every action to suit their whims, mostly for their own entertainment. They invented us because magic never existed in their world, so they had to invent it just to feel whole.”
“But this is my world,” said a young voice with a British accent. “At least, it feels . . . similar.”
As she listened, Bethany carefully flipped through the books she’d brought and ripped out specific pages, stuffing each into her pocket.
“Open your eyes, boy,” the Magister said. “Don’t you see? Don’t you see what they’ve done?”
“If what you say is true, then why would they do this?” the boy asked. “And where would they find the power, especially without magic?”
“I haven’t yet learned that answer, but I will. And you shall stand by my side when I do. I have a power source, locked in the dungeon below. With that power, I can free all oppressed characters from every story ever written. And then, with their former entertainers united against them, we’ll send this world’s people into the stories they wrote for us. We’ll be free to live on their world, as we should have been from the beginning!”
“But many would be hurt, maybe killed,” the boy said. “How can you think that’s—”
“Those who would control the fates of others deserve no less,” the Magister said. “But if you need further proof as to these people’s treachery, I offer you this.”
The door flung open, and Bethany stumbled into the room.
“This girl,” the Magister said, pointing at Bethany. “It was her power I used to bring you here. Cast a spell on her mind, my new apprentice. Force her to tell you the truth. The others come from other worlds, but she was born here. She will know. Make her tell you.”
The boy, wearing a gray shirt and pants that looked like they came from the middle ages, gave Bethany a doubtful look. “I don’t use my power like that.” He frowned. “At least, I don’t want to. Part of me wishes I did, but . . . but that part isn’t in control.”
The Magister smiled. “You can be whoever you want to be once they’re gone, my friend. That is the beauty of freedom, and all it takes is seizing it!”
“He might be right,” Bethany admitted, standing up. “I can’t honestly say that . . . Wait, what’s your name?”
“Merlin,” the boy told her.
Bethany’s eyes widened, and she lost her place for a second. Merlin? But she quickly pulled herself together and continued. “He could be telling you the truth, Merlin. Not about freeing all the characters from stories, or trapping people in books—that part is insane. But writers here do somehow see into your minds, see your thoughts and your worlds, see other time periods and histories.” She shook her head. “Do they make them up? Are they just witnesses to a different reality? I don’t know. I don’t know that anyone knows.”
“That can’t be!” the Magister roared. “The writers must hold us in their sway! You believe the people of Quanterium would try to wipe out all of Magisteria if they weren’t being controlled somehow?”
“I think that people do horrible things when they’re frightened,” Bethany said quietly. “And I don’t just mean the people of Quanterium. Go back to your world, Magister. Leave this place in peace, and we can forget any of this ever happened. Literally. We’ll use a forget spell, and you can go back to being a hero, a mentor, a teacher, whatever your world needs. Whatever Kiel needs.”
“Kiel betrayed me,” the Magister said.
“This isn’t you,” Bethany said. “Not the real you. You’re someone that people here look up to. Someone they wish taught them, even though they don’t even believe you exist. Think about that. Think of what that means, that kind of inspiration, that kind of wonder. How do you think they’d feel if they saw you now?”
The Magister narrowed his eyes. “Do not test me, girl of two worlds. I tried to give you a world of happiness, but you rejected it. I still need your power, and it’s just as accessible if I leave you in my dungeon instead.”
“Hear that, Merlin?” Bethany said. “That the side you want to be on?”
Merlin dropped his head into his hands. “Part of me . . . yes.”
Bethany swallowed hard. Right. Merlin had some evil blood in him, if the stories were true. Which they were, if he was here. “Um, okay. Then listen to the other part. The part of you that you want to be, not the part of you you’re afraid you are. Embrace that half.” She forced a smile. “Embrace the fictional, Merlin.”
“You would return to your book, living out their stories?” the Magister told Merlin. “You’d prefer that life to one where we live in freedom?”
Merlin stood up and looked the Magister right in the eye.
“There must be another way—” he started to say, then immediately disappeared.
“So be it then,” the Magister said, then turned back to Bethany, his eyes furious. “You seem to be making a habit of turning my apprentices against me, girl. I have grown tired of this game. It’s time to end it.”
“What did you do with Jonathan Porterhouse?” she asked, eyeing him warily.
“I left him in a book, as I promised,” the Magister said. “First he wrote you a new life story for me, and now he will spend the rest of his days seeing if he can write his own. He cannot be left to control my world with his writing anymore!”
“Which book? There are thousands downstairs!”
The Magister glared at her. “The titles were meaningless to me.”
Bethany gritted her teeth. “He could die!”
“I . . . would hope not,” the Magister said. “But if so, would my world not be the better for it? And what about your friend Owen? Don’t you wish to know where he is?”
Bethany’s eyes widened. “What did you do with him?”
“This was not my doing, I assure you,” the Magister said, then held up a book that Bethany had seen the cover of earlier that day, in a poster as big as a wall. “Kiel Gnomenfoot and the Source of Magic,” the Magister read. “An advance copy, I’m told. It seems your friend didn’t want the story to go on without its main character.” He glared at her. “Perhaps Jonathan Porterhouse neglected to mention that he murders Kiel at the end of this book? And now your friend Owen plays at being Kiel, following his story. This sort of thing cannot continue!”
“No,” she whispered. “Give me that book.”
The Magister snapped, and flames burst into his hand, setting the book ablaze. “There are more,” he said calmly. “Down in the library, as well. Porterhouse had an entire box of them. But those will burn just as easily, my dear, if you continue to defy me.” He wiped the remaining ashes from his hand and raised an eyebrow. “So what now, Bethany? You have no protectors, no magic on your side. You’ve left behind your happiness, the only thing you wanted, and for what? To have your say here?” He shook his head. “Perhaps there really is no escaping our stories. It is not too late to help me. Kiel might listen to you. Join me, and together we will end these authors’ power once and for all!”
Bethany couldn’t stop staring at the ashes of the Kiel Gnomenfoot book. Owen was trapped in there, and going to . . . die?
All of the fear, the worry, everything she’d felt the last day or two suddenly just disappeared. No more guilt or panic about books or changing their stories. Owen? The same Owen who’d looked at the Everlasting Gobstopper with so much excitement, who’d told her about the locating spell for her father? The Owen who loved Kiel Gnomenfoot so much that he’d messed up the entire series just to be a part of it?
“Protectors?” Bethany said softly. “Magic? You think I need those things to face you? A made-up character? Everything you were was in those books. Out here, you’re nothing. A shadow. A fiction.”
Her mother, her father, everything just faded away in front of an all-consuming anger. Be more fictional, Kiel had said.
“You should not speak to me that way,” the Magister said, his voice low and cold.
“You talk a big game,” Bethany said, glaring at him with pure hatred. “Let’s see what you’ve got, Mr. Imaginary Magician.”
His eyes widened, and both his hands rose. “So be it, then. The dungeon it shall be for you, and this time, there will be no happy ending to your story!”
“Only if you catch me,” she whispered, holding up a page of a book that she’d taken from the library. “Come and get me, old man.”
And with that, she dove in.