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“Oh, dear me. That’s a problem,” Kit stammers, winning the award for Understatement Of The Year.
“It’s mould,” hollers Curt. “It can’t do a people thing.”
“Why don’t you tell it?” says Kit. “It’ll listen to you.”
“Slime monster,” I choke out. “With teeth.”
“I can see that,” Curt bellows. “How do we get past it?”
“No idea,” I reply, frozen to the spot with terror.
“Nor I,” whimpers the tigerlion.
“You’re the Storyteller,” says Curt, extracting his hair from my fist. “Make something up.”
“I don’t think my imagination is very well,” I mutter, still staring at those undulating teeth.
Curt grabs both Kit and me by the ear, yanking us towards him and snarling, “You do your magic. You tell a story. NOW!” He whacks the book down on Kit’s furry head, opens it and shoves the pages into his nose.
“Fire magic alone can’t deal with that thing,” moans Kit, going cross-eyed as he strains to focus on the too close pages.
Multiple voices, layered into ear bleeding disharmony, tumble from the monster’s mouth, like a peel of laughter from the devil himself. That sneering ridicule has the opposite effect on our cat, who pulls himself upright and calmly says, “Begin the story.”
Now would be the worst time in history for writer’s block, but I swear I can’t recall a single word of English, or any other language for that matter, except variations on poop. Still holding the book open for Kit, Curt gives me a kick, as though that will help.
“Alright, Mange. Just a bleedin’ moment,” I snarl.
The monster bends at what I loosely call his waist and that array of teeth sweeps down in an arc, heading straight for us.
“We don’t have a moment,” Curt yells, leaping in front of me, which is brave, but won’t save all three of us from disappearing down the thing’s gullet. If it has one.
Wrangling lips which have turned to rubber, I mumble, “Er, the library erurp..., er burst, er went bang in big fire.” Not my finest literary moment, but I hear Kit stutter as though he’s borrowed his teeth from Curt.
“Meowy meowy blowey uppy.”
Big bang.
A very big bang.
Even the mould golem jumps in fright. The library shudders and a large chunk of stone falls from the arched ceiling, dropping onto the monster’s head, which splatters into a shower of mould. The stone thunders into the smashed marble flooring, sending up a cloud of dust and slime. A distant hiss quickly gathers volume into a roar. The monster’s head reforms from surrounding splatter, the eye sockets arriving in time to witness a wall of superheated blue flame blasting through the library.
“Vault,” yells Kit, bounding back down the steps as though his swinging tail is on fire, which it soon will be.
With the book tucked under one arm, Curt drags me down the steps, slipping off each one as we stumble into the vault. Two paws wrap around us both and we’re pulled into a group hug, nose to nose.
“Raow raow shield,” hollers Kit, spitting in Curt’s eye.
The fire blasts into the vault. Curt’s one open eye holds my gaze as he presses his forehead against mine. This is where our story ends. In fire.
Or not.
Our tiny world turns neon blue as the flames burst upon Kit’s invisible magic shield and roar over our heads. Remnants of mould sloshing around our feet and paws let out a screech and crawl under the shield, pressing up against our shins. I tuck my head into Curt’s neck, figuring if I’m about to die, this is the best place to be. Thankfully, when it finally goes quiet we’re all still here and non crispy.
Once the blast passes, Kit staggers from the effort, bumping his head against mine as his shield vanishes. The sudden blast of heat and the stench of firebombed mould is frankly beyond description and I gag, repeatedly.
“To the roof,” mumbles the dizzy cat, his chest heaving as he coughs. “Go now. I’ll follow, when I can.”
“I’m not leaving you,” I cry, flinging my arms around his furry neck and slotting my head between the sabre teeth.
Kit leans into my embrace and whispers something I don’t catch.
“What?”
“The castle will explode,” Kit forces out. “You don’t have long. Can’t stop the flow.”
The vault walls vibrate, releasing a confetti shower of slimy gems, and the stone ominously creaks over our heads. Spider web cracks spread through smoke smeared marble as the shaking increases. Kit’s eyes close as though he’s nodding off in an armchair.
“Wake up, cat,” Curt shouts, yanking on Kit’s beard and stamping on a paw.
“Ow. You little gulch,” hollers the tigerlion, in a most unKitlike manner, swinging the bruised paw and thumping the wolf so hard, he lands halfway up the roasted steps. The falling book whacks Curt on the back of his head. “And get off my paws,” Kit growls at fleeing mould, which pours itself into cracks in the floor and disappears.
As soon as I’m sure the livid cat is wobbling up the steps behind me, I race past Curt, who’s dusting himself down, scoop up the book and dash into the library, hitting a wall of heat like the inside of an oven. Every remaining book has already perished in a pile of ash, but there’s no time to mourn their loss. Everything, technically inflammable or not, is burning in a fiery purge of the Snake Empire and its many sins. There’s no mould anywhere, the cavernous space filled only with remnants of blue light from the superheated flames, but I doubt we’ve seen the last of our slimy nemesis.
“Out,” Curt shouts, grabbing my collar as he limp runs past.
I glance over my shoulder.
“I’m here,” gasps Kit, speedily staggering in a wavy line. “Keep going.”
I’m hurrying down the length of the throbbing, juddering library, clinging to the book and praying we’re heading in the right direction for the exit, when it hits me. We won’t be able to get up to the roof through the ballroom. Another glance at Kit shows he’s clearly knackered and running out of the energy he’ll need for getting rid of the serpents. He can’t be levitating any of us back up the missing staircase onto the balcony. How do we get out of here?
A nightmare flashback of a freezing cold terrace, leading to my Tower of Hypothermia prison, gives me the answer, just as we stumble through the library and into the ballroom, revealing that it’s much worse than I thought. The precarious balcony, once delicately hovering over the ballroom, now resides on its floor, smashed into a heap of stone and twisted metal, the entrance archway blocked by its own collapse.
“Can’t go that way,” Kit sighs, struggling to hold up the weight of his own head.
“We’ll go out the front door,” Curt announces, turning so fast he makes my head spin. Two paces later he falters. “Which way was it?”
“Doesn’t matter,” I tell him, as Kit catches up. “We have to go up, not down. If we go through the tunnel to the front door, I just know it’ll drop on us.” The castle shudders, proving my point with a shower of falling masonry. “We need to go up, to Wings and Gulid. Remember that tower where you found me?”
“With the slippery terrace?” asks Curt.
“That’s the one.”
A giant chunk of the ceiling disconnects with a resonating crack and crashes into the ballroom floor, blue flame licking at its wounds.
“Lead on, Storyteller,” says Kit, eyes looking a little brighter. “I’m not going down with the castle. Certainly not a serpent monstrosity. No taste, these snakes.”
I spin Curt around, telling him, “We have to go back to the library.”
“We just left...”
“Serpen’s quarters are on the other side and I know how to go up from there.”
Back through the melting library we hurry and through the buckling door into the corridor. With magical fire leaping through the castle, torches become unnecessary, with more than enough light to see the stone crumbling around us.
CRAAACK.
Kit sticks his claws in Curt’s coat and yanks him back into his embrace. A rock smashes exactly where my wolf was standing. Wrapped in Kit’s front paws, cheek pressed to cheek, Curt gently taps on a claw. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” Kit replies, his outward breath puffing Curt’s grey locks.
“Sorry I trod on you.”
“And pulled my beard.”
“And pulled your beard.”
A discarded yellow uniform jacket, once worn by one of Serpen’s eagle servants and, under protest, by myself, crawls up the corridor towards us, infested with mould maggots. It drags itself, inch by inch, through a gap in the wall, the sleeve disappearing last, as though waving goodbye. There’s another scene for replay in my nightmares. If I live another night.
To my relief I spot the notoriously thin and vertiginous staircase leading to Serpen’s rooms. “Down here and watch your step.”
“Hate stairs,” the limping wolf moans.
I arrive at the king’s open quarters, the splintered door, once kicked in by Wings, still on the floor, when a strangulated yell echoes down the stairs. I leap inside the room as Curt and Kit toboggan past in a tangle of limbs and paws. Apparently one of them slipped and took the other with him. It looks as though Curt got the best of it, with a nice soft landing on Kit’s tummy. Luckily for the bruised duo, they’ve not gained any maggot freeloaders on the ride.
Kit strokes Curt’s head with a paw, his belly laugh bouncing the wolf up and down. It must be the stress because Curt guffaws. We don’t have time for hilarity.
“Get up, both of you,” I snap and clamber over the wrecked door, leaving the laughing hyenas to disentangle.
Serpen’s quarters weren’t particularly spectacular on my first viewing, but they’re a wreck now, making me glad he didn’t come with us. Although the mould temporarily fled the oncoming flames, it’s left behind proof of its infestation in the dripping walls and the huge stonework fireplace. Tattered armchairs and shredded tapestries remain where they fell during the battle, the blue and gold rugs rotting into mulch.
Curt and Kit stagger through the doorway behind me. “This place hasn’t improved,” says the wolf to the cat. “This is where Serpen bit me.”
“Unless you care to continue reminiscing,” says Kit, peering at blue flames flickering through a hefty crack in the ceiling, “I suggest we move on before the ugly room collapses on us.”
He’s right. There’s nothing here except memories. Speaking of which...
“I think the terrace is this way,” I tell them, heading back into the corridor.
“Why are we perpetually entering rooms, then leaving again?” I hear the cat mutter as I search for the route up to the terrace.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t in the best frame of mind when Gulid dragged me through these corridors on pain of a death sentence, so I’m silently praying I end up on that terrifying terrace where, hopefully, I can avoid plunging to my death for a second time.
To cut a long story and even longer corridors short, by some miracle I emerge onto that very terrace, only this time it’s pitch dark, except for the blue flames lapping through every window, below. The entire castle shudders and half the terrace walkway drops into the darkness, leaving my toes teetering on the edge of a precipice. A vicious wave of vertigo sweeps over me as my hair blows straight in my eyes. I clutch the book to my chest as though it’ll save me.
A hand slaps over my mouth and I’m grabbed from behind.
