FORT SLOWLY PUSHED TO HIS feet, facing the wall. In spite of the boy’s threats, Fort actually felt more fear for what was to come than for himself. Images of Buckingham Palace on fire and stolen spirits from London’s population passed through his head, along with the tsunami caused by the invading army he’d seen in the war to come.
And all of that would happen if he couldn’t stop the dragon here and now.
But how? Fort only had two spells: Heal Minor Wounds and Teleport. Well, and one instance left of a Restore Dimensional Portal spell, but that wasn’t going to do much, not here—
And then something caught his eye on the wall before him, reflecting the light from Damian’s fireballs. Words, barely visible in the darkness, carved in the shape of an arch, just like the one that had led into the tomb.
Only this time, he actually recognized three of these words: “gen,” “urre’otre,” and “platrexe.”
The spell words to reopen a dimensional portal.
Maybe the stairs led somewhere after all.
But that didn’t matter if he couldn’t slow Damian down. There had to be something he could do, even with his limited spells. Send him … oh. Oh! It was dangerous, and would definitely make the dragon even angrier than he was now, but it still might work.
“I’m not going to fight you,” Fort said, raising his hands in surrender as he turned to face Damian, hoping his arms would block the other boy’s view of the wall.
Damian snorted. “More lies? You know all I have to do is read your mind, and …” He trailed off as he looked past Fort at the wall. “Oh, forget it. I see what you’re trying to hide. What’s this?”
“No, don’t, please !” Fort shouted, reaching out to grab Damian’s arm, but the dragon just knocked his hand away, moving past him to the wall as if he didn’t even consider Fort a threat. Which was fair.
“So this leads to Avalon,” Damian said, reading the words, running his fingers over them. He glanced back at Fort. “Sorry, I know you don’t know enough magic to have figured that out. It says that these are instructions, and they invite those with great skill to travel to the dimension of the Avalonians and present themselves to the queen.” He paused, then ran his hands over the last few words and laughed. “And it says no humans ! Amazing.”
No humans? Hopefully that was just Damian misleading him. Either way, it wasn’t something Fort could worry about right now. “So you’re going to open it?” he asked, taking a step backward.
“Oh, so that’s your genius plan?” Damian said. “I open the portal for you, and then you somehow get past me to find the book?” He snorted. “Nice try. Even if I did open the portal, there’s no way you’d ever get past me.”
Fort sighed deeply. “You caught me,” he said. “Does it help if I promise not to do that?” He took another step back toward the stairs. The room wasn’t that big, but there should be just enough space for—
Damian’s eyes glowed yellow, and Fort felt the dragon in his mind again, though this time, he seemed to be reading it instead of taking him over like he had Rachel. “Teleportation?” the other boy said finally, the yellow glow disappearing. “That’s your big plan, to teleport me somewhere? Anywhere you send me, I can just bring myself right back, Fitzgerald. So please, explain your big plan to me. I can’t wait to hear it all.”
Fort took one last step backward, his heel now running into the bottom stair. A quick look behind him showed that Rachel and Ellora were just far enough away for this to work. Then he smiled. “I mean, it’s not much of a plan. And really, I’m actually doing you a favor.”
“A favor?” Damian asked, raising an eyebrow. “How is that, exactly?”
“I’m giving you some new perspective,” Fort said. “You know, from orbit.”
And with that, he opened a teleportation circle directly between him and Damian, one that led to the moon.
Instantly, the vacuum of space sucked Damian straight into the portal, giving him no time at all to react. Fort did regret that part, since he wished he could have seen the look on the boy’s face. Still, he didn’t exactly have time to worry about it, since he, Ellora, and Rachel were now being rapidly pulled toward the other side of the portal as well, along with small rocks, dust, and anything else not nailed down.
“Fort?” Ellora shouted in surprise. “What did you do?”
“Don’t worry!” he shouted back as the vacuum dragged him across the floor. “I’ve got this!”
Just before his foot entered the portal, he quickly slammed it shut, and all the debris heading for it now tumbled down around him as the room went completely dark again.
Fort used his Healing magic to create a light, then pushed to his feet and ran back to where Ellora was bracing herself on the bottom of the staircase, holding Rachel as best she could. “Sorry about that,” he said, helping her carry Rachel the rest of the way to the empty room at the bottom of the stairs. “It was the only thing I could think of.”
“Where’d you send him?” Ellora asked. “Oh, wait, my magic’s back now that he’s gone. I can check.” Her eyes went black, and she gasped. “The moon?!”
“I figured it’d be a surprise, if nothing else,” Fort said, blushing in the dim light. “He should be fine: If Rachel could make her own air, he can too. But it might give us a few seconds to get her up.”
“We might not even have that,” Ellora said, but Fort was already using his Heal Minor Wounds spell on Rachel.
Her eyelids flickered, and she looked up at him drowsily, then cringed. “I don’t think your spell is doing much.”
“I know, I’m sorry,” he said. “Just get ready with a lightning spell, will you?”
She looked at him strangely, then nodded. “Okay, but—”
Damian reappeared in the middle of the room in a green burst of light, shivering wildly, with his hair askew. “Fitzgerald!” he roared, almost as loud as his dragon voice. “You could have killed me!”
“Now!” Fort shouted, and Rachel unleashed her lightning straight at the dragon boy. Far too distracted to stop it, Damian went flying back against the nearby wall as the bolt hit him, taking him down like a Taser. He shuddered a few times, then went quiet, still breathing but unconscious.
“Oh,” Rachel said. “I see.” She pushed to her feet but almost fell over as she did. “Where’s Jia?”
“Right,” Fort said, and quickly opened a portal to the burial room above, then leaped through it, hoping Jia was okay.
She’d morphed back into her human body at some point and even seemed to be waking up from whatever Mind spell Damian had used on her. “Did he beat us?” she asked as Fort helped her to her feet, using his Healing spell on her as well.
“Just about,” Fort told her. “Come on, we don’t have much time.”
He helped walk her through the portal back down to the bottom of the stairs, as she turned her Healing magic on herself. When she saw Rachel, though, she quickly switched targets, and moments later, all of them were at least awake, if not feeling great.
“So this is a nice, scenic dead end and all,” Rachel said, staring at the wall. “But I guess I was hoping for more.”
Fort smiled at her, then brought his Restore Dimensional Portal spell to mind and closed his eyes. Just as it had before, the magic illuminated all the dimensional portals that had been created anywhere within sight, only this time, Fort gasped. While he could see a few portals when he’d used the spell back beneath the old Oppenheimer School, here it looked like the world was on fire. Portals lit up in every direction, extending as far as the eye could see.
Apparently there really had been a golden age of magic in the UK.
He concentrated on the portal outline on the wall just in front of him and unleashed his magic. Hopefully that message about “no humans” wasn’t real, and whoever lived in Avalon would be friendly, because none of them were in any shape to take on a Dracsi or another dragon.
“Oh!” Rachel said, and Fort opened his eyes to find a glowing green oval on the wall before them, right between the words of magic in the shape of an arch. The light was so bright in the darkness that it almost blinded them, and Fort had to cover his eyes with his arm.
As his sight adjusted, he realized that having used his last instance of the spell, the words he’d been able to read before in the arch now looked like gibberish, and for a moment, he worried that somehow the portal would close, and they’d be stuck there.
And then something flashed green at his side, and Damian disappeared.
Uh-oh. If he was awake, it was only a matter of time until he got his head together and came roaring back. And that meant they didn’t have time to think: They had to take a chance on the portal, whether they ended up trapped in Avalon or not.
“Get through the portal!” Fort shouted at the others, and pushed Rachel and Jia through, with Ellora just behind them. With his friends all inside, he started to jump through it as well, as another flash of green light erupted behind him.
Damian in his human form plowed right into him, tackling Fort through the dimensional portal as the dragon boy shouted incoherently. The two landed on something hard and unforgiving, knocking the wind out of Fort.
Around him, Fort thought he saw people gathering, but his attention quickly returned to Damian as the dragon boy punched him in the stomach so hard that he saw spots. “I could have suffocated out there!” Damian roared. He drove his fist into Fort’s stomach again, almost causing Fort to throw up from the pain. “Do you even know—”
And then an enormous hammer made of rock slammed into Damian’s chest, knocking him back through the portal.
“Do you even know, Wyrm Boy?” Rachel shouted, readying the hammer for another hit as Damian picked himself up in the room they’d just left. He roared again and leaped toward the portal—
And bounced off it hard enough to knock himself back to the staircase. He quickly regained his feet and launched a fireball at it, which exploded back at him after slamming into the barrier of black light that now covered the portal. He roared something, over and over, but no sound passed through, not after Ellora had frozen the portal with her Time magic.
Rachel dropped her hammer and stood in front of the portal, laughing loudly. “Look at Mr. All-Powerful Dragon Man!” she shouted, pointing at him and making exaggerated faces. “Not so tough from that side of the portal, are you?”
“Maybe don’t get him more riled up,” Jia said, but she seemed just as pleased, watching Damian’s silent temper tantrum.
“Thanks, Rachel, and you too, Ellora,” Fort said as he slowly began to breathe again. Jia helped him to his feet, sending Healing magic through him, which gave him the energy he needed to confirm that they were, in fact, definitely not alone.
Fort found himself standing in the middle of what looked like a sort of medieval market, with booths and covered wagons showcasing all kinds of unearthly and exotic items for sale. At each little shop stood what looked like a child, all the kids about Fort’s size, only with longer ears, skin of every color in the rainbow, and dressed in brightly colored, elaborate clothing.
Not only that, but a group of the children seemed to have them surrounded and were staring at them curiously.
Remembering his first meeting with the Dracsi-caretaking dwarfs, Fort held up his hands in what he hoped was a peaceful gesture. “We’re not here to hurt you,” he told these new children.
One of them stepped forward, her skin green and hair yellow. She cleared her throat to speak. “Of course you’re not, human,” she said, giving Fort a pitying look. “You’re far too weak for that. What we want to know is if that’s a real dragon that you’ve captured.” Her eyes lit up as she looked past Fort to where Damian was banging on the time-frozen portal. “If so, what might you be willing to trade for it?”