The Case of the Battling Bots

by Liam O'Donnell

  “The Shadow Tower has a battle-bot team?” Tank said. “I thought wizards couldn’t use technology.”

  “We can’t, but we can use our magic. We enchant the metal and make it do what we want.”

  “Not fair!” Tank said.

  “Relax,” Aleetha said. “We are only wizards-in-training. Our enchantments are limited. Trust me. It’s all fair.”

  “Makes sense,” I said. “The other battle-bot competitors have to build their own bots and write their own code.”

  “Unless your name is Rizzo Rawlins,” Tank grumbled.

  The TV at the front of the diner suddenly became louder. Rita had the TV remote in her large paw and was turning up the volume on the screen hanging on the wall.

  On the screen, a young news reporter was talking so fast that she struggled to catch her breath.

  “It all started downtown about an hour ago,” the reporter said. She waved her arms around like she was doing some new dance. “That’s when monsters across Slick City lost control of their technology. All thanks to this mysterious figure.”

  A familiar purple face appeared on the news report.

  “The Codex!” Tank and I said together.

  The TV news cut to the weather report. Rita turned down the volume. The bugbear rolled over to a table of goblins and joined them in talking about the strange news story.

  “Did you hear that?” Aleetha said. “The Codex is planning to strike during the Slurp Stadium grand opening this weekend.”

  “The Battle Bot Cup is part of the grand opening,” Tank said. “Do you think they’re connected?”

  “Could be,” Aleetha said. Her fiery red eyes glowed with curiosity. Once she got hold of an unsolved problem, Aleetha couldn’t let go. “Who or what is the Codex Army?”

  I scrolled through the photos again until I found the one I wanted.

  “I think we already know one of the Codex’s soldiers,” I said.

  The image of Rizzo talking to the Codex stared up at all of us.

  No one spoke, but I knew we were all thinking the same thing.

  Rizzo was part of the Codex Army.

  The next morning, Tank met me at the school gates.

  “You got here just in time,” she said.

  “In time for what?”

  “Hopefully, to hear Rizzo confess.”

  A high-pitched yelp came from near the bike racks. We hurried around the side of the school.

  Rizzo Rawlins faced off against the whole Troll Patrol squad. There was no sign of the Gutro twins. Daztan had him by his shirt collar. The kobold’s furry feet dangled off the ground.

  Tank turned to me. “This wasn’t my idea, Fizz. I told them hurting Rizzo wouldn’t help our case. But there was no stopping them.”

  Rizzo snarled, snapped and growled, but he could not break free from the troll’s tight grip.

  “Put me down, you big wart sack!” he yelped.

  “Not so tough without your goons, are you, Rizzo?” Daztan said.

  “They’ll be here soon, Daztan,” Rizzo snapped.

  Ryla moved in close to the dangling kobold.

  “Then we have time to ask you a few questions.” She held up a piece of vizpaper and poked Rizzo in the belly with her long finger. “Care to explain what you’re doing in these photos?”

  “This is all my fault,” Tank said under her breath to me. She tugged with worry at the pockets of her tool belt. “I showed the Troll Patrol my photos of Rizzo meeting the Codex.”

  “And they decided to take matters into their own claws,” I said.

  “Daztan and the others are still angry about losing to Rizzo,” Tank said.

  “I can see that.” I stepped closer to Daztan. “Put the kobold down, Daz. We can get answers from him without risking a trip to Weaver’s office.”

  “He’ll just run.” Daztan grunted. “Kobolds always run.”

  “He’ll stay and answer some questions.” I turned to Rizzo. “Won’t you?”

  Rizzo’s beady eyes jumped to each of us, sizing up his chances of actually running free from three trolls much older than him. Even a kobold like Rizzo could do that math.

  “I’ll stay,” he muttered. “But keep your claws off my fur!”

  Daztan let go of Rizzo. The kobold dropped to the ground but didn’t run. For now. We didn’t have much time. The Gutro twins would arrive at school soon and tip the scales back in Rizzo’s favor.

  The smelly kobold had a point. The only way we could prove Rizzo was using the Codex’s battle-bot equipment was to actually see it installed in his battle bot. Like Rizzo said, that wasn’t happening. Only Principal Weaver could force Rizzo to show us what was under his bot’s armored casing. That old web crawler thought Rizzo was a model student, so that wasn’t happening either.

  The school bell rang. Monsters from all over the schoolyard shuffled into the school, ready to get the day started.

  “I believe we are done here,” Rizzo said. He licked his snout with satisfaction. “I don’t have time to be bothered with this nonsense again. I have the citywide battle-bot finals to prepare for. Out of my way!”

  The kobold pushed through us and headed into the school. His laughter rang in my ears long after he had gone inside.

  Disappointment was written on the faces of the Troll Patrol. Rizzo Rawlins just couldn’t lose. He had won the school battle-bot finals and proved our only piece of evidence useless.

  The day had just begun and already I was wishing I could crawl back into bed.

  By the end of the school day, my mood had not improved. Rizzo was still going to get away with cheating, and I had a fresh pile of homework to deal with.

  I planned to head home and drown my sorrows with a stack of choco-slug cookies and some video games.

  Tank caught up with me at my locker. She was out of breath.

  “Grab your stuff, Fizz. We don’t have much time.”

  “Time?” I said. “Time for what?”

  Tank looked at me. “Did you turn off your phone again?”

  I had. I’m not anti-tech or anything—I just don’t like the idea of a phone always tracking where I’m going. Of course, when I turn it off I miss getting messages. Like the one Aleetha had sent Tank and me a few minutes ago.

  Our friend’s message appeared on my phone’s screen when I turned it on. It was short and to the point:

  Twenty minutes later, we hopped off our boards in unfamiliar territory.

  “The Mage District,” I said. “I’ve never actually been here before.”

  “Me neither,” Tank said. She curled her nose. “It smells of magic.”

  The Mage District was a warren of twisty streets and narrow alleys lined with booksellers, scroll merchants and traders of magical knowledge of all kinds. Behind us, Slurp Stadium dominated the skyline. Much closer and much taller, the Shadow Tower loomed.

  “I isolated the trace-back data from Aleetha’s message.” Tank walked in a slow circle with her eyes on her phone. She stopp
ed suddenly and looked up. “The call came from inside that building.”

  The upper floor of the library was completely dark. Thankfully, goblins and dark go well together. I could make out the rows of shelves stretching into the shadows. Each shelf was packed with books, scrolls and bound parchment.

  Tank’s eyes never left her phone screen. She led the way through the dark.

  “Aleetha isn’t answering my calls,” she said as she went. “But we’re getting close to her phone’s signal source.”

  She hurried between two rows of shelves packed with dusty scrolls, then stopped.

  On the ground at Tank’s feet, something small sparkled with magic.

  “Aleetha’s phone,” I said.

  “But no Aleetha,” Tank said.

  A terrifying roar split the darkness.

  The roar was quickly followed by a scream.

  Tank’s eyes locked with mine.

  “Aleetha!”

  Running toward screams in the dark is never a good idea. But when the screams belong to your friend, good ideas get tossed out the window.

  Tank rushed between the rows of shelves with me close behind.

  The screams led us to a round, shelf-lined room with a few dusty chairs and tables. It must have been some sort of study hall. Now it looked like a battle arena. Aleetha stood on top of a table in the middle of the room, facing an enemy unlike anything I had ever seen.

  The only sound in the room was our breathing. Aleetha eyed the thick book under Tank’s feet as if it might jump to life and attack again.

  “That book is trapped,” she said. “I came up here looking for old maps of Slick City. That book was waiting for me.”

  “Waiting for you?” I asked. “How can a book be waiting for you?”

  “Never underestimate a book, Fizz,” Aleetha said. Her fiery red eyes pierced the gloom of the study hall. She approached the book slowly. “Even the most mundane tome has the ability to touch the reader.”

  “That book definitely touched me!” I rubbed my neck where the scaly demon had grabbed me.

  Aleetha examined the book, careful not to get too close.

  “This book is enchanted with a guardian spell. That’s what attacked us.” She glanced up at the shelves around us. “This is the map room. Only maps and old sea charts should be up here.”

  “But this book was here too?” Tank said, her foot still firmly pressing the book closed.

  “Right beside the map I was looking for,” Aleetha said. “I took the map from the shelf and the book jumped off too.”

  “Jumped?” I said. “Books can’t jump.”

  “Tell that to whatever is inside these pages,” Aleetha said. She reached deep into the folds of her mage’s robes and pulled out something small and metallic. “This book doesn’t belong here. Someone put it next to the old maps of Slick City.”

  “Someone who didn’t want you to see the maps,” I said.

  “Exactly.” Aleetha gingerly fiddled with the side of the book. There was a solid snapping noise, like metal connecting with metal. When the lava elf stepped away from the book, a small but sturdy padlock held the covers of the book firmly closed.

  “You can step away, Tank,” she said. “I think we have silenced the book’s guardian for now.”

  “For now?” Tank said. She slowly stepped off the thick book. She eyed the padlock suspiciously.

  “It’s just a practice lock for enchantments and stuff,” Aleetha said. “It’s designed to keep greedy roommates out of my food cupboard.”

  “And now it’s the only thing keeping us safe from a magical guardian with a taste for goblins?” I moved behind a large table, just to be on the safe side.

  “If this book was up here waiting for you, then that means...”

  “Someone knew I was coming,” Aleetha finished.

  “But who?” Tank said.

  Aleetha’s eyes fell to the cover of the book on the floor.

  A familiar face stared back at us.

  “The Codex!”

  On the cover of the book that had nearly eaten the three of us, the calm purple face of the Codex stared out at us.

  “Azaralath: Keeper of the Fire,” I said, reading the cover of the book.

  “Who is Azaralath?” Tank said. “And why does he look like the Codex?”

  “Azaralath, also known as Az,” Aleetha said. “I knew I had seen the Codex’s face before. We studied all the old demons in history class. It’s hard to forget a face like Az’s.”

  “Demons?” I said. The scales on my neck stood on end. “Az is a demon?”

  Tank took another step away from the padlocked book. “I thought demons had all been banished back to their home worlds.”

  “I did too,” Aleetha said.

  “Codex the hacker is really a demon?” Tank said.

  “No,” Aleetha said. “Az the demon was banished centuries ago. The Codex is probably just some monster using the demon’s face to scare us.”

  “It’s working,” Tank muttered. She didn’t take her eyes off the book.

  So the mystery hacker we’d seen on the jumbo screen at Slurp Stadium was using the face of a banished demon to scare Slick City. Tank was right. It was working. No matter where I went in that dark room, the eyes staring from the cover of the book followed me.

  “Can we go now?” Tank said. “We saved you from big, bad and bookish.”

  Aleetha didn’t answer. She took a dusty scroll from the shelf and spread it across a table. She stood on a chair and leaned over the scroll, studying it closely.

  “Interesting,” she said. She was too deep in her own ideas to hear Tank. “Look at this.”

  The scroll nearly reached both sides of the table. Faded lines ran across the parchment.

  “A map,” I said.

  “An old goblin map, to be precise,” Aleetha said. “It’s a map of Slick City before it became Slick City.”

  “How’s that?” Tank tilted to one side like she was looking for a secret message hidden in the map.

  “It was created by the goblins before the ogres came and settled Slick City,” Aleetha said.

  “You mean before the ogres took the land from the goblins,” I said. “My goblin ancestors were here fishing in Fang Harbor long before the ogres showed up. They kicked us off our land so they could drill for slick.”

  Tank nodded. “And they’ve been pulling the goopy stuff out of the rocks ever since.”

  “All very true,” Aleetha said. “And it means this map is old. Very old.”

  “Why are we looking at something old?” Tank said.

  “Because I have a feeling old secrets are causing new troubles today,” Aleetha said.

  Aleetha moved her parchment next to the map. The large shape on it was a perfect match to the one on the map. She drummed her elf fingers on the paper.

  “These numbers under the shape are map coordinates,” she said. “I looked them up on a current map of Slick City.
They match the spot where the buildings were torn down to build the stadium.”

  “So you came here to see if they matched anything on the older maps,” Tank said.

  “Exactly,” Aleetha said. “I made a copy. The original page is still in the Shadow Tower library. Now that I see the same shape on the map, I think they’re connected. But I can’t read the writing. It’s written in an old goblin language.”

  Tank and Aleetha both turned to me.

  “I can’t help you,” I said. “I can barely read modern goblin writing!”

  I took a closer look at the paper with the little stick monster. The letters definitely didn’t make any sense. But I could tell the monster was doing something to the big shape with the little shape in his hands.

  “It looks like instructions,” I said. “Like it’s trying to tell you how to do something with the shapes.”

  Aleetha nodded. “Whatever it says, this spot was special for your ancestors, Fizz.”

  Books crashed to the floor in the shadows on the edge of the map room.

  We froze, our questions silenced. My scales stood on end.

  “We are being watched.” Aleetha waved her hand and vanished in a cloud of purple sparks, like she was never there.

  Now Tank and I were alone in the gloom.

  “Where did she go?” I said. “I hate when she does that.”

  Tank ignored me and worked at one of the pockets of her tool belt.

  “Don’t get your tail in a knot, Fizz. I’m still here.” Aleetha’s voice came from nowhere and everywhere. “I’m just invisible, but it won’t last long.”

  Heavy footsteps thumped the library’s old stone floor. Whatever was out there was moving away from us, but that didn’t do much to smooth my scales.

  The dusty air of the map room wafted around me. It took me a moment to realize that Aleetha was pushing her way past me. Her voice came from the shadows in a whisper.