NO,” FORT WHISPERED, DROPPING to the stone and running his hands over it frantically. It couldn’t be true. There had to be a way in. The monster had emerged from this very spot, the portal proved it! How could it be totally blocked now?!
“No!” he shouted this time, banging his fists on the rock. Pain shot through his hands, but he barely noticed it in his anger. “Let me in!” he shouted, hitting the rock again. “Let. Me. In!”
But there was no response, and his voice just echoed eerily through the cavern below the former Oppenheimer School. He wouldn’t accept this. It couldn’t be true. Fort leaped to his feet, barely able to think. How could this be happening? There was no way he could get this close, only to lose his father again!
Anger turned to rage, and he began lashing out, stomping on the rock with all of his strength, yelling, screaming at someone, anyone to open the passage. He cursed the monsters, Damian, the Oppenheimer School, Colonel Charles, and everyone else he could think of until he ran out of names, then just started screaming gutturally.
After what felt like hours but was probably only minutes, his throat began to itch from his shouting, and his kicks and punches lost some of their energy. He slowly fell to his knees, fighting back tears.
“This can’t be happening,” he whispered, shaking his head. “I’m so close.”
For a time, he just knelt there on the rock, not sure what else to do. His anger disappeared as the minutes passed, replaced by a roller coaster of despair and determination.
What was the point? He was never going to find his father. It had been far too long.
But if he gave up now, what would happen to his dad if he was still alive down there?
It wasn’t giving up if he couldn’t get through the rock! He didn’t have any other options.
But there had to be some way through. He could teleport throughout the entire world, but a boulder could stop him in his tracks?
But to teleport, he had to know the destination, and there was no way of knowing what lay beyond the rock, or where his father might be. No, he had to get through the rock somehow. There must be magic that would do it, a Destruction spell, or… or Ethereal Spirit, the Healing spell!
For a moment, a fragile hope buoyed Fort’s spirits, and he stood back up. Ethereal Spirit turned your body insubstantial, letting you swim right through solid objects. He could relearn that, and…
Except he hadn’t learned it. Sierra had stolen it from Jia’s mind without meaning to and planted it in Fort’s, back when he was trying to pass his Healing test in the original school. If he tried to learn it now, it could take months or longer to even reach the spell.
Maybe he really did need Jia or Rachel, just to get through to the other dimension. But that would mean one of them would be lost, and he wasn’t willing to even consider that. Besides, Cyrus had said Fort alone could rescue his father, if he was willing to not make it back himself. How was that possible if this obstacle stopped him?
That meant there must be a way through, and all he had to do was think of it. He sat back down on the rock, racking his brain for ideas. Unfortunately, every new possibility that occurred to him would have required one of his friends, and he slammed his palm down on the rock, the frustration and anger coming back quickly. There had to be a way he could do this alone! If he couldn’t bring one of the other students, then maybe a magical item. He felt around to the staff and bow on his back, but a fireball wasn’t going to damage the stone. The staff’s Healing magic would be just as useless, and the only other item Fort remembered in the armory was a shield, which didn’t seem like it’d accomplish a whole lot here either.
But maybe there were other items? Didn’t he hear someone talking about a hammer? He tried to home in on that memory, but could only bring to mind the bathroom, for some reason. Wait, that was it, the bathroom, and Chad and Bryce talking on either side of his stall.
Trey had wanted to switch to Healing, that was it. But before that, they’d mentioned what he was working on. A hammer.
A hammer infused with an earthquake spell from the Destruction book.
Fort climbed back out of the portal so fast he almost tripped over his staff. He immediately opened a teleportation circle back to the weapons room and leaped through it, emerging into darkness once more. He clicked on the light again and started his search.
Fort glanced around, finding row upon row of staffs, more bows, a lot of bandages and amulets on chains, but no hammers.
There were a few items covered with cloth on the tables in the room, too small for Fort to have bothered with before. But at this point, he was running out of options. None of the covered stuff looked big enough to break a rock, but magic wasn’t really about size.
The first item he uncovered was some kind of metal sculpture, almost like a small turtle. That for sure wasn’t it, so Fort kept moving, finding a large black key next, then a pin of tiny wings, like pilots would sometimes give out on airplanes, and finally…
Finally, a tiny silver hammer lying on top of a pillow. It couldn’t have been more than three inches long.
Fort peered in close and found a note attached to it with a small piece of string, almost like a gift tag on a present.
The Earthshatterer, the note said. Work in progress. Don’t touch! EXTREMELY dangerous!
Really? This was the Earthshatterer? He picked it up in his hands, and nothing happened, no glow like when he’d grabbed the staff and bow earlier. Maybe it wasn’t done yet, like the note said.
But as of right now, he had no other options. He might as well try it; if he went back to the cavern and the hammer didn’t do anything, he wouldn’t be any worse off than he was now.
Of course, if the hammer did too much, it might collapse the whole cavern, sending a few tons of rock down to bury him beneath the old Oppenheimer School.
But Cyrus said he’d bring his father back alone. If the cavern collapsed, his dad wasn’t going to get back through. So it must be safe… ish.
Either way, better to put himself in danger than his friends. Like Gabriel said, protect the ones you love, no matter the cost.
But that didn’t mean he shouldn’t be prepared. Fort grabbed the hammer and created another teleportation circle, this time back to the room with the dragon skeletons, where he’d hidden the Summoning book. Now that he’d cast Restore Dimensional Portal, the words had reappeared on the page.
He wouldn’t need it again, he hoped. But better safe than sorry, especially if he did end up taking the entire cavern down with him. If he cut off this portal, there was still the one below the National Mall in Washington, D.C., and he’d need the spell again to try there, if the unthinkable happened.
After the itchy magic filled him once more, he hid the book, then teleported back to the cavern below the old school. There was the glowing portal, just as he’d left it, and he stepped inside, then got down on his knees to confirm there weren’t any cracks or fissures in the rock, somewhere he could aim the hammer. Unfortunately, just like before, the stone looked completely solid.
He still had no idea how that was possible. Could the monsters have some sort of magic that restored whatever they tunneled through? Or maybe worse, was there something else down there with them that could ? Maybe the red-eyed things from his dream?
It didn’t matter. His father was in there somewhere, which meant Fort was going in too.
He leaned forward, careful not to accidentally tap Earthshatterer against his own body at all. He assumed the earthquake spell only worked on, well, earth, but it wasn’t something he was willing to bet his legs on.
Now just inches away, he pinched the tiny hammer between two of his fingers, then brought it slowly down toward the rock, sweat dripping down his forehead from the tension. Suddenly the weight of the rock above him seemed to be stifling, and he couldn’t figure out how it hadn’t fallen yet.
No. Don’t think about it. Concentrate on how it’s going to open the portal for you.
“Please, Earthshatterer,” he whispered to the hammer, trying not to roll his eyes at the name. “Just split this rock below me, that’s all you have to do. Don’t go all crazy on me, okay? If I get buried here, you do too.”
With that, Fort closed his eyes, took a deep breath, then gently tapped the hammer against the rock below him.
With a sound like an explosion, the rock vaporized into dust, sending Fort tumbling into the darkness below.