OH, PLEASE NO, FORT THOUGHT as a fireball lit up the center of the room, floating in another newcomer’s hand. He looked up to see Rachel glaring around angrily—fireball in hand—and Jia, leaning on a silver staff exactly like Fort’s, looking ready to keep fighting. Gabriel leaned down and offered Fort his nonshield hand.
“Hey, you okay, Fort?” Gabriel asked, his smile fading into concern. “They didn’t hurt you, did they?” He helped Fort to his feet and brushed some dirt off of his back.
“What were you thinking?” Rachel shouted. “You came here by yourself, after everything Cyrus told you?”
“He was just trying to keep you two safe,” Gabriel said. “We can’t fault him for that.”
“Oh, I can!” Rachel said. “I can fault him for days.”
“Do you think there are more of them?” Jia asked, glancing around the room. “Maybe I should go check that tunnel, in case some are hiding.”
Rachel rolled her eyes. “You’re not supposed to enjoy this sort of thing.”
“Says the girl who takes guys down in practice and screams, ‘That’s what I’m talkin’ about!’ over them,” Jia pointed out.
“How… how are you here?” Fort asked, finally getting the words out.
“How do you think?” Rachel said, glaring at him. “You’re lucky I’m the forgiving type. In that I don’t forgive you at all, but I’ll still come after you and keep your sorry behind alive.” She pulled a bag off of her shoulder and dropped it at Fort’s feet.
The book of Summoning fell out, with his note on top.
“But… I haven’t been gone that long,” he said, still not believing this. “How did you find my note that quickly?”
“Oh, Rachel’s been keeping an eye on you,” Jia said. “She’s been using—”
“Shh!” Rachel shushed, her eyes wide. “That’s not important!”
Jia snorted, then pushed past Rachel. “Don’t listen to her, she’s all embarrassed about this. She learned the first telepathy magic spell in the book of Mind magic, Detect Mind, when you brought the books to her. Basically she’s had it going since that night, watching over you, making sure you didn’t do anything crazy without us along.”
“You were watching me?” Fort asked, both shocked and offended.
“I couldn’t see anything!” Rachel said, and Fort could tell she was blushing a bit, even in the light of her fireball. “It just told me where you were. Or it did, until you started wearing that amulet. Where’d you even find that? I told Cyrus to make you get rid of it.”
That was what Cyrus had been trying to tell him? “One of the TDA agents made me put it on,” he said. “But that doesn’t matter. I’ve been wearing it the whole time I was here. You couldn’t have known.”
“You took it off for a minute or so,” Jia pointed out, over Rachel’s shushing her. “That was the first time we saw you leave the school since you went to New York, so we knew you’d mastered teleportation. It took a little while to find out how to get to you—”
“Basically they came looking for you in our room, hoping to find clues, and I told them where you practiced,” Gabriel said. Fort gave him a betrayed look, but Gabriel shrugged it off. “Hey, you might be protecting them, but I’m watching out for you, roomie. You’re not going to make me feel even an ounce bad about it, so don’t bother.”
“How annoying is teleportation, by the way?” Rachel said, rolling her eyes. “I knew you were below the old school, where you just left a dimensional portal wide open for anyone to walk right through, but because I’d never been down here, I had to teleport us all up to the base above, then tunnel down here using Destruction magic. That’s why we took so long.”
“I think we got those monsters all riled up,” Jia said. “A few of them tried to grab for us while Rachel floated us down, before we worked out where you’d gone.”
“Floated you?” Fort said to Rachel. “I knew you could make tornados, but I didn’t know you could fly.”
“We’ve had an interesting few days, me and Jia,” Rachel said. “I’ll tell you about it when you’ve apologized to me a few thousand times.”
“Anyway, that’s how we got here,” Gabriel said, clapping Fort’s shoulder. “And now that we’re all together—”
“You can leave together,” Fort finished for him. “You can’t be here! If you stay, then… then bad things happen, okay? I know it for a fact. Cyrus—”
“Cyrus told us, too,” Jia said. “Both what would happen if we came… or if you went alone.”
“Yeah, nice try,” Rachel said, glaring at him. “You think you’re just going to leave us behind and get trapped here forever? We’d just spend the next few weeks trying to get you out, and probably all die trying.”
“So, what, then?” Fort said. “You all just planned on showing up and carrying me back home, whether I wanted to go or not?”
“We should,” Rachel said. “You deserve it. But first, we’re going to do this.” She leaned down and set her fireballs against the book of Summoning.
Fort started to stop her, but then paused and changed his mind. After everything he’d done, and now putting his friends in danger, this might be the right move. Besides, now there really was no way the Old Ones could get ahold of it.
“We, uh, never said we’d be doing that,” Gabriel said, his voice low as he stared at Rachel.
“I don’t remember needing to ask your permission,” Rachel said, glaring at him.
“Rachel,” Jia said, and began whispering to the other girl as Rachel tried waving her off.
“Fort,” Gabriel said, turning back to him, though he still seemed annoyed about the book. “We talked about it, and we’re with you,” he said. “But none of us are going to get ‘lost’ here, or whatever Cyrus said. Because I have a plan.”
“Oh, a plan,” Fort said. “Those have gone so well for us in the past.”
“Yeah, but this one Cyrus told me would work,” Gabriel said. “But he also told me if I told any of you, that you’d mess it up, so I have to keep it to myself.”
“Yeah, we didn’t buy that either,” Jia said as Rachel shook her head. “Still, we can’t leave your dad here, Fort.”
Fort just stared at his roommate in confusion. “What could you do that would get us all home safely that none of the rest of us thought of? Cyrus told me that there was no way, that it didn’t matter what we did.”
Gabriel punched his shoulder, giving Fort another bruise. “Guess I’m just more creative. Now let’s get a move on. We’re not going to rescue your dad just sitting around here.”
Something groaned from the corner, and Gabriel immediately tensed up, running over with his shield. Jia got a crazy look in her eye and followed right behind him as Rachel just stared at her in shock. “She’s losing her mind, but I kinda like it,” she whispered to Fort.
“All of you are losing your minds,” he told her, but moved quickly to see what was going on.
One of the red-goggled creatures was leaning against the wall. As Rachel brought her light closer, Fort saw that it wasn’t a monster at all, but instead, looked almost… human. A short human, at least. With just the hint of a beard, and—
“They’re dwarves!” Rachel shouted, bouncing up and down in excitement. “Are you seeing this? Real, actual, dwarves!” She sent her fireball flying around the room, revealing more of the creatures as it circled, then landing back in her hand. “Look at their beards! I wonder why they wear the goggles? This is so cool!” She leaned down and stared at the still-groaning dwarf, just inches from his face.
“Okay, let’s not play with them,” Jia said, pulling Rachel off of the dwarf.
Gabriel leaned in next, a curious look on his face. “Are they really dwarves? But why would they be here, with those monsters?”
Rachel shrugged. “We’re underground, and that’s sort of a traditional dwarf place to live. Look.” She pointed at the weapons strewn about the floor. “They’ve got pickaxes and stuff. Maybe they’re miners. Lots of dwarves are.”
“How do you know all of this?” Gabriel asked her.
“How do you not?” she said. “Isn’t it common knowledge?” She leaned over and pulled Jia’s hands back as the other girl started healing the dwarf. “Um, what are you doing?”
“Curing the disease I gave this one,” Jia said, looking confused. “We can’t just leave them here like this. What if they’re hurt?”
“They tried to kill us,” Rachel said.
“Only in self-defense,” Jia pointed out. “Fort, were they hurting you before we got here?”
Fort shook his head. “Not really. Threatening a little. But some of them wanted me to escape, before their masters heard I was here.” He shivered. “That’s what they called the Old Ones.”
Jia’s hands flew into the air, the healing energy disappearing. “Okay, maybe we do just leave them as is. No one said anything about Old Ones.”
Before Fort could respond, something below his shirt began to feel uncomfortably warm. He reached in and pulled out his amulet, which was getting hotter as he held it. “Look at this,” he started to say to his friends, only to watch as Jia, Rachel, and Gabriel all gasped in pain and doubled over. “Whoa, what’s going on?”
Rachel hissed in agony, looking up at him with terror in her eyes. “You can’t… hear it?”
“It’s… it’s filling my mind !” Jia shouted, holding her head in both hands.
“What is?!” Fort shouted, but his friends all fell to their knees, still moaning in pain.
Not knowing what else to do, he quickly touched his staff to Jia first, then Rachel, and finally Gabriel. Each time, cold, blue magic passed into their heads, and they relaxed, suddenly free of whatever had been attacking them. As they did, his amulet went cold again, like whatever had been pushing against it had ceased.
“That’s what those things feel like?” Gabriel said, sweating profusely.
“Now you see why I wanted to burn those books in the first place,” Rachel told him.
“Will someone tell me what just happened?” Fort asked, positive he didn’t really want to know the answer.
“It was just like the dwarf told you,” Jia said, shaking her head. “That was an Old One in our heads, the one that possessed Damian. It knows we’re here. And…”
“And they’re coming for us,” Rachel finished. “All of them.”