by James Hunter
Sam crept to the end of the hallway and perfectly followed Bill’s instructions, pressing and probing the bricks surrounding the tapestry, then tracing his fingers over the various geometric shapes and patterns worked into the fabric. At first, it seemed like nothing was happening, but after thirty seconds or so, the intricate shapes and lines on the faded fabric began to glow, fed by a trickle of ghostly blue Mana which seeped from Sam’s fingertips. After another few passes, there was an audible *click*, and the bottom of the tapestry fluttered in some unfelt breeze. Feeling a rush of exhilaration, Sam lifted the tapestry and found a yawning hallway gouged into the wall.
Perception +1!
“Wait, what’s that now?” Sam faltered on the verge of the threshold. “Incredibly deadly traps?”
Sam didn’t like any of this, but what other choice did he have? With a reluctant sigh, he ducked into the passageway, bracing himself for whatever fresh horror the Mage’s College was going to toss at him.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Sam spent the next hour carefully navigating the secret passageway, even though the path itself was as straight as an arrow. Various traps were scattered throughout, some as deadly as the hungry snake book. Apparently, Arch-Magnus Zigrun the Paranoid had earned his moniker for good reason because there were enough traps to take out a not-so-small army, and each was more deadly and inventive than the last.
Pressure plates which triggered gouts of magical fire that burned like falling stars, scorching anything in a ten-foot radius. Dead drop darts coated with rancid poison that erupted from the walls. Enormous, magically-glowing, axe-bladed pendulums. False floors littered with everything from spikes to acid.
The hallway was an absolute death trap, but Bill proved to be uncanny at spotting the trouble. Sam asked the book why he was so good at it. Had Bill been some sort of Rogue? Or was trap detection part and parcel of the Bibliomancer class? Bill insisted it had nothing to do with either of those options. According to him, he and Zigrun the Paranoid had actually been friends prior to the current Archmage’s ascension to prominence on the back of The Accords.
If Bill was to be believed, he helped Zigrun set most of the traps in this place, but neither of them had ever gotten to use the escape tunnel. Zigrun’s paranoia had proved to be entirely justified since the current Archmage had staged a coup and removed him by force.
“So, is that why the Archmage locked you up?” Sam quizzed as the pair of them crept through the tunnel, ears straining for the distant sounds of angry guards. Nothing so far. “Because you were buddies with the guy he overthrew?”
“That’s awful,” Sam whispered, although it also made so much sense. “We’ve got to do something.”
“That was super offensive.”
Up ahead was another dead-end capped with a tapestry exactly like the one that had allowed them into this place. Once more, Bill walked Sam through the elaborate and carefully rehearsed movements required to open the exit. A *click* soon followed, and this time, the tapestry disappeared entirely, letting in a bitterly cold gust of wind that cut through his paper armor like a flaming dagger. The breath caught in Sam’s throat as he glanced down. What in the heck? They were easily twenty feet up, and straight down were rolling fields of grass and gentle hillocks covered in an assortment of long grass and small bushes.
Not far off were the dark shapes of trees, standing tall and gaunt against the night-dark horizon. This was impossible. Had to be.
Somehow, they were inside the exterior wall that surrounded Ardania, but that couldn’t be. The Mage’s College was about as far from the exterior wall as you could get—rivaled only by the Royal Palace. True, they’d been walking for an hour, but they hadn’t been moving quickly, not with all the deadly traps to navigate.
If Sam had to guess, he’d say they’d covered maybe a little more than a mile, but that wasn’t near far enough to get them to the edge of the city. Based on the countryside and the location of the tree line, this wasn’t anywhere near the gate he’d ventured through before with the Wolf Pack, but that didn’t really change anything. He finally sputtered, “But how?”
The book couldn’t shrug because it had no shoulders, but Sam could certainly hear the shrug in Bill’s voice.
“I think you might need to reevaluate your definition of simple.” Sam started rubbing at the bridge of his nose. He felt a headache c
oming on; though whether it was from stress, lack of sleep, or dehydration, he couldn’t rightly say. It might even have been from the terrible smell emanating off the black goop covering his body and clothes. “The bigger problem, though, is what the heck are we supposed to do now?”
“It’s like… twenty feet down!”
“You’re missing a bigger issue,” Sam flatly informed the condescending book, “It’s midnight. If we jump now, there’s no way for us to get back into the city until morning, and from all accounts, getting stuck outside the city gates after dark is an absolute death sentence.”
Sam broke into restless pacing, running through his options. Waiting wasn’t a great plan, and it left a lot to chance, but it wasn’t like he had a huge number of options. They couldn’t go back the way they’d come—that much was certain—and he didn’t want to risk the sprawling wilderness. If he died, he would respawn, sure, but he would respawn in the Ardania town square just like everyone else. What was to stop the Mages from deploying a squad of bounty hunters who would just camp the town square until he reappeared? Absolutely nothing. In fact, Sam had to admit that’s what he would do if their roles were reversed.
So, finally, he dropped down on to the floor and pressed his back against the wall, feeling more than a little defeated. He was exhausted to his core—quite literally—thanks to the incredibly long day he’d had—a day that felt like it was never going to quit. While he’d been fighting for his life, he hadn’t noticed just how tired he was, not with all that adrenaline flowing through his veins. But the white-hot surge of adrenaline was gone now, and it left him feeling hollow and weak by its absence. Now, here he was stranded in a dusty hallway at the end of a murder corridor, silently praying that he wouldn’t have to jump to his doom.
Sam propped his knees up and rubbed at his eyes, grinding his palms into his eye-sockets, but it was no use. He groaned softly, sprawled his legs out, and took a few deep breaths before closing his eyes. Which was exactly when the sound of approaching footsteps caught his ear. The noise was soft—just a distant crunch of accumulated dust and grime on a stone floor—but it was distinct enough to immediately catch his attention. Sam was on his feet in an instant, eyes shut, ears straining toward the sound. Was someone really there… or was his exhaustion-addled brain just inventing things?
Bill’s voice came a second later,
There was a loud *click-thump* and flare of light as someone set off a trap. “Gah! It set my bloody arm on fire! Put it out!”
That was a voice Sam could never forget. Octavius. That one of the traps had just set the Peak Student on fire offered Sam a small burst of smug satisfaction, but the fact that Octavius had managed to survive at all was deeply disappointing. Worse, the noise was close—so very close now—and it still wasn’t anywhere near dawn—five or six hours away, at least. There was a flash of movement and Octavius appeared from the darkness of the tunnel, materializing like an angry poltergeist come to exact its revenge. A trio of Mages accompanied the Earth Mage; somehow all lower-ranked Mages. Two were at the Student level, just like Octavius.
Tullus Adventus was a thick-shouldered brute, while Elsia Derumaux was a blade-thin woman. He recognized them by sight, and the only thing Sam really knew about them was that they followed Octavius around like faithful bloodhounds and would do anything he said at the drop of a hat. The third Mage present, however, was a knife to the guts—Finn. The ice Mage stood apart from the others, and the bruises lining his arms and ringing his eyes told Sam everything he needed to know.
His friend hadn’t sold him out, but it was clear Finn was going to suffer terribly for Sam’s actions. Octavius would be punished too, but there was an old saying that Sam’s dad liked to use, feces inevitably rolls downhill. It seemed that Finn was going to receive more than his fair share of it.
“Looks like there’s nowhere left for you to run.” Octavius’ sneer was as deep and wide as a chasm. “You’ve caused me more shame then you can ever imagine, but I can assure you I will get my recompense out of your flesh, you commoner piece of filth. If you give up now, it’s possible I’ll be able to persuade the Archmage to show some level of leniency… not that you deserve it. Still, I can be both magnanimous and gracious, but if you resist even in the slightest…”
Octavius faltered, his sneer transforming into a vicious, feral smile that promised pain. “Well, you will regret it until your dying day… however far off that may be.”
He turned his cold, calculating gaze on Finn. “You. Failure. Talk some sense into him. That’s what we brought you along for, after all. Mayhap if you can convince him to capitulate without further resistance, it will lessen your sentence as well.”
The words were spoken casually, cruelly, and Sam suspected they were as much for his ears as for Finn. Sam hesitated, not because he really thought Octavius would show any measure of leniency, but because he was worried about what might happen to Finn if he made a run for it. For Sam, this was a game, one he could quit and restart at any time, but for the young Lordling, this was life. There was no respawn. No quick log out and new character creation. Finn would be stuck with whatever decision Sam made… He would be the one to really pay the price.
But before Sam could make up his mind one way or another, Finn acted. The ice Mage moved quickly, throwing himself against the square-jawed Tullus Adventus while simultaneously launching an ice-bolt into Elsia Derumaux’s neck. Neither attack would seriously hurt the Mage Armor-clad students, but it made for one heck of a distraction, and that—more than anything else—decided Sam.
With a thought, he conjured his Origami tome and brought it to bear, tossing a Paper Shuriken at Octavius, who looked completely stunned by this current turn of events. The paper stars hit true, slamming Octavius back and into the far wall while arcs of bright blue Mana sprayed off his armor and into the air.
“Run, Sam!” Finn shouted, launching a wave of Ice Spikes at Octavius and his sidekicks. In a heartbeat, the scholarly boy was racing toward the yawning hole at the end of the passageway. Finn grabbed Sam’s sleeve in passing and pulled him into motion. “Don’t just stand there! We’re only going to get one shot at this thing!”
Before Sam could think about it, Finn shoved him with both hands. The next instant, he was plummeting from the side of the wall, his arms pinwheeling like mad as butterflies swooped and dove in his gut. Sam hit the ground like a sack of potatoes, the shock of the impact jolting up his legs.
Thankfully, his judo training kicked in. If there was one thing you learned in judo, it was how to take a fall. Working on pure muscle memory, Sam angled himself forward, tucking into a tight forward roll that dispersed the majority of the impact and quickly brought him back to his feet, more or less uninjured.
Sure, he’d burned through the entirety of his armor and ten health from the tumble, but he hadn’t broken a leg or otherwise seriously damaged himself. The numbers spun in his head, and he realized that even with the excellent landing, he still burned through the equivalent of two hundred health from that fall.
He spun in a circle, searching for any sign of Finn, but a commotion high in the wall drew his eye instead. Octavius’ hulking thug, T
ullus, had the smaller ice Mage wrapped up from behind in a tight bear hug. Finn was kicking wildly, jerking this way and that as he tried to free himself, but the older Student looked entirely unaffected. He held Finn like a father restraining a grumpy toddler throwing a temper tantrum.
Perfect. It wasn’t like Bibliomantic Sorcerers were especially weak again flame attacks or anything. Sam needed to run, but he couldn’t just leave Finn to the mercy of these magical bullies. He used his Origami tome to launch a Shuriken, but a cone of flame burst from thin air and incinerated his folded star. Ash rained down in plumes of gray and black. Yep. That had been exactly as effective as he imagined it would be.
If Sam didn’t know any better, he’d say the book sounded genuinely apologetic. Octavius thrust one hand forward, and the earth rumbled beneath Sam’s feet. A lance of hardened rock exploded upward, the spear of stone slashing the outside of Sam’s arm, biting through a full quarter of Sam’s health and leaving a white-hot line of pain in its wake. Celestial Feces! A few inches to the left, and that thing would’ve spit him like a roast pig!
