GABRIEL SCREAMED IN RAGE AND pulled back his shield to strike again, only to freeze in place.
A moment later, so did the rest of them.
“ATTEMPT TO INTERFERE, AND I WILL DESTROY YOU,” the Old One said, slowly beating its wings. Dust kicked up all over the room as the remaining dragons disappeared, and the Old One rose into the air.
“No!” Rachel shouted, struggling against her paralysis. “We can’t let him get away, Fort! Use your magic!”
Fort concentrated, and his hands glowed green at his side as a massive teleportation circle opened right above the dragon, covering the tunnel to the portal and leading right back to Dragon’s Teeth. There was nowhere for the Old One to go, as Fort extended the circle to just inches away from the walls on each side. At his size, there was just no way the dragon could get past it.
The Old One paused in midair, then shrank to the size of a house fly and flew through the gap between the wall and portal.
“NO!” Rachel shouted, but it was already too late. Their paralysis once again faded, and there could only be one reason why: The Old One had made it to Earth.
“We need to get after it!” Rachel shouted. “There’s no time to waste!”
“We’re not going anywhere until my father’s okay!” Fort shouted at her.
“What?” Rachel said. “Think about what that dragon can do! And there’s a teleportation circle still opened to the school, from where we came in!”
“He’s okay to move,” Jia told Fort. “I don’t know what’s keeping him unconscious, but he seems fine physically. We won’t hurt him if we take him with us.”
Fort gritted his teeth. He didn’t like it, but he also didn’t want to stay in this dimension another second, especially with the Old Ones on their way. He leaned down to pick up his father, and Jia helped from the other side. Together, they lifted him up and held him between them.
As soon as they had him, Fort opened a teleportation circle vertically in front of them, one that emerged just inches below the portal, set diagonally to shoot them out to the stone floor beyond.
“Because the portal is in midair, you’re going to need to run through the circle here,” he told the others. “Your momentum will take you through the portal, but be careful how you—”
Rachel didn’t bother listening to the rest, and instead leaped through the circle. Gabriel’s eyes flickered in multiple directions, but when he saw Fort waiting for him, he nodded and leaped through next.
A moment later, his upside-down hands extended back through the teleportation circle at the top. “Hand him to me!” Gabriel shouted, and Fort and Jia passed his father into Gabriel’s arms. The older boy lifted Fort’s father through the portal, leaving it clear for them to follow.
Once they were all back in the cavern below the old Oppenheimer School, Fort immediately closed the teleportation circle beneath them. He started to do the same to the dimensional portal, then stopped.
If they were somehow going to force the Old One to return to its dimension, they’d have to get it back here and through the portal, which presented a big problem. Obviously he couldn’t close the portal now, or they’d be trapped with the dragon on Earth. But if he left it open, there was no telling what might come through. The Old Ones had to be almost to Dragon’s Teeth, and it wouldn’t take them long from there to find out what had happened to the Dracsi.
“We’re going to have to guard the portal until I bring the Old One back,” he told the others.
“What?” Rachel shouted. “Did you lose your mind like that elf? The Old Ones are coming! You think we’ll be able to stop them from walking through this thing?”
“That’s why I need to get the dragon back in it before they arrive,” he said. “There’s no time to argue. I’m the only one who can teleport it back here, so I’m going after it. Rachel, you and Gabriel should stay here—”
“No way,” she said. “You won’t be able to fight that thing without me.”
“If it comes to fighting it, we’ve already lost,” he told her. “It can freeze us in place. No, you need to stay, because you’re the only one who can collapse this place and bring a ton of rock down on top of anyone who tries to come through.”
She growled, but nodded. “This is all on you, Fort, from start to finish. You need to fix this!”
Fort turned to Gabriel, thinking he was going to object to being left behind, but he just nodded and put a hand on Fort’s shoulder. “I’ll make sure she’s okay,” he said. “Good luck with that dragon.”
Happy to not have to argue, Fort nodded. “Jia, I’m going to teleport you and my dad to the school’s hospital, then see if I can find the dragon. If it did go through the teleportation circle, it shouldn’t be hard to find. If not, I’ll just turn on the news.”
“Of course,” Jia said, moving to pick up his father from Gabriel, with Fort helping. “I’ll call Dr. Ambrose in too.”
“Thank you,” he said, knowing the words weren’t enough, but they were all he had. “Be back soon,” he told Rachel and Gabriel, then opened a circle in front of him, and together with Jia, carried his father through.
They found two doctors in white coats staring at them as they emerged, one already on the phone for the guards. When they saw Fort’s unconscious father, both immediately moved to take him, gently carrying him to one of the free beds.
“What’s his situation?” one of them asked Jia.
“Unknown,” she said. “Physically he’s okay, but… he’s sort of been trapped as a giant monster for the last six months or so.”
The woman just stared at her for a moment, then began checking his vital signs. Jia turned to Fort, who couldn’t look away, and gently pushed him toward the teleportation circle. “Go,” she said.
He nodded in acknowledgment but stood still, unable to leave his father. After all this time, his dad was just feet from him, back where he belonged. But why hadn’t he woken up? He’d said Fort’s name, so at least he hadn’t gone feral like the elf had after who knew how long being a Dracsi.
“Fort,” Jia said. “He’ll be fine.”
As much as it killed Fort to be anywhere other than at his dad’s side, he knew that Jia was the one who could really help heal him. And right now Fort had to make sure no one else got hurt because of the risks he’d taken to save him.
With one last look at his dad, Fort forced himself to turn and run out of the room. He stopped just outside, unsure where to go next. If the Old One had come here, there should be some signs of him, like screaming students and the guards defending the school. But the facility was also big enough that he might not be able to hear it from where he was.
He needed to get somewhere more central first, and then see what was happening. He teleported himself to the armory, the place he’d most feared the Old One would go, but thankfully, the room was empty.
Unfortunately, the screams coming from beyond the armory’s door told him that the hallway outside wasn’t.
Fort unlocked the door, then ran down the hallway as alarms began to blare. The screams were coming from a few hallways away, so he raced as fast as he could only to stop dead, shocked into paralysis by the trail the Old One had left.
Two guards had been merged with the wall, somehow still alive and otherwise unharmed as they tried to free themselves. Another was tied up in her own arms, which were now long enough to wrap around her body over and over. Two more had been connected at the back, and both were trying to pull away in opposite directions, just trying to escape.
“Help us!” one of the guards shouted.
But there was nothing Fort could do, not without Healing… or rather, Corporeal magic. Instead, he sprinted through the hall, knowing that he had to get the Old One out of here above all else. Jia and the other healing students could help the Old One’s victims.
As he continued following the trail of guards, gradually Fort began to recognize where he was going. He came to a halt, realizing that of course that was the dragon’s destination. Instead of running any farther, he opened a teleportation portal straight to the display room, hoping he wasn’t making a mistake.
He wasn’t. The dragon stood before the ancient bones of his children at the other side of the room, the rage-filled power pulsating off of him so strong that Fort could feel it on his skin.
Just in front of him, Sergeant Tower lay unconscious, a silver staff lying a short distance away. Considering that his body hadn’t been magically changed, the dragon must have fought him physically. Still, it looked like he was breathing, so that was something.
With the Old One distracted by the skeletons, Fort held his breath, then opened a teleportation circle directly below the dragon, one that spit out right above the portal back to its dimension.
But instead of falling through his circle, the dragon instead just hung in midair, neither falling nor even moving in the slightest.
“I WARNED YOU NOT TO INTERFERE!” the dragon said, his head turning to face Fort, eyes glowing with rage. “ARE THESE THE LAST DRAGONS YOU BARGAINED WITH, THE EARTHLY REMAINS OF MY CHILDREN?! YOU WOULD TAUNT ME WITH THEIR BONES?!”
An invisible force grabbed Fort by his throat and yanked him into the air, flying straight at the dragon. He struggled to breathe or free himself, but the magic was far too strong. “Didn’t taunt…,” he gasped. “These aren’t… the last…”
Darkness pushed in on his vision as his lungs cried out for oxygen, but the dragon didn’t release him. Instead, it just sneered. “THEN WHERE IS MY CHILD? WHERE IS THIS FABLED LAST DRAGON?!”
Fort’s mind scrambled as he slowly lost consciousness. Gabriel seemed sure he knew that the last dragon existed, but Fort had no idea where it could be. “I… can take… you,” he bluffed, but whatever the dragon replied, it was lost to Fort as he passed out.
A moment later, he awoke on the floor, blue magic fading around him as the dragon healed him. “ENOUGH LIES,” the dragon said, his face just inches from Fort’s. “AND ENOUGH BARGAINS. BRING ME TO MY CHILD, OR I WILL RAZE THIS EARTH TO ITS MOLTEN CORE.”
Fort started to respond, trying to think his way out of this, but one of the dragon’s claws pushed into his chest, and he gasped in pain. He nodded. “I’ll… bring you.”
“NOW,” the dragon said, and slid the claw beneath Fort’s back, picking him up in his hand. “TAKE ME NOW.”