The Adventurer's Guide to Successful Escapes

by Wade Albert White

  Guards filled the plaza; many were scurrying back and forth, barking orders.

  “Where are we?” asked Anne.

  Hiro swallowed. “Wizards’ Council headquarters. Something tells me they know we’ve escaped.”

  “It’s riskier and slower to send you from a random location. Nana has a much better chance of getting you to your destination quickly from that yard,” Jocelyn explained. “Since in this case we can’t assume the destination has a designated landing zone, and since you won’t have much time once you do arrive, we have to give you every advantage.”

  “Aren’t you glad you saved those premium top-speed fireballs?” said Nana.

  “That still doesn’t explain why we came to the council’s front door,” said Anne.

  “It was the nearest yard,” Jocelyn explained. “I’m afraid we’re out of options. We’ll wait here until the others have given their signal.”

  “What’s the signal?” asked Anne.

  “The captain didn’t say exactly, but I expect we’ll know it when we see it.”

  Not five minutes later, a commotion arose down the street. Anne risked a peek around the corner. Sailing straight down the main avenue, barely twenty feet off the ground, was one of the council ships. Copperhelm was at the wheel, bellowing at the top of his lungs. Sassafras leaned over the railing and shouted something at a statue in the plaza. The statue exploded in an impressive display of fireworks and sent the guards running in all directions. The falling pieces of marble unexpectedly transformed into yappy poodles that chased after them.

  “I’m pretty sure blowing up council property is against regulations,” muttered Hiro.

  “Come and get us, you scurvy dogs,” yelled Copperhelm.

  The plan worked. The square emptied as soldiers and wizards alike tried to either board the ship with grappling hooks, dodge Sassafras’s spells, or escape the wrath of the growing army of poodles.

  Anne stepped forward, but Jocelyn pulled her back. She pointed to the walled-in yard, and Anne noticed something she had missed the first time: A large green dragon with three eyes and three great horns on its head lay sleeping in the middle of the yard, apparently unbothered by the chaos all around it.

  “Who’s going to take care of the council dragon?” asked Penelope.

  “Can’t Nana?” said Anne.

  Nana swung her long neck around. “Not if Nana is expected to also perform the intricate calculations needed to get you to your destination quickly and also ensure you don’t crash into the side of a tier or land in a lake full of acid or something. Encrypted coordinates are tricky business.”

  “Actually, someone else has already agreed to take care of it,” said Jocelyn, and she pointed behind them.

  Rokk stepped out of the shadows.

  “Rokk!” said Anne, running over and giving him a big hug.

  Jocelyn pointed to the sleeping dragon. “Rokk, we need you to clear that landing zone.”

  Rokk nodded. “I will attempt to have the subject leave voluntarily using alternative dispute resolution techniques.”

  “That’s fine,” said Jocelyn. “But if he doesn’t volunteer quickly, move him. Once we leave the safety of cover, we’re not going to have a lot of time.”

  “Acknowledged,” said Rokk, and he marched out of the alley.

  “Kick his big scaly green butt,” yelled Penelope.

  Rokk strode across the plaza and into the yard. The dragon lifted its horned head, and Rokk raised a hand in a gesture of greeting.

  “Hello,” he said. “My name is Rokk. I am a PAL series robot. My companions and I are attempting to conduct an illegal escape. Would you be so kind as to remove yourself from the premises?”

  Anne winced.

  “That’s… not going to be good,” said Penelope.

  The dragon opened its mouth and spewed red flame, which engulfed Rokk. Penelope groaned, and Anne covered her face with her hands, although she peeked between her fingers, because as hard as it was to watch, she couldn’t bear not to. The fire barrage went on and on; when it finally stopped, Anne held her breath, waiting for the smoke to clear. Incredibly, Rokk was still standing. He glowed slightly but looked otherwise unharmed. Penelope jumped up and down and clapped Anne on the back.

  “I am interpreting your response as a refusal to comply,” said Rokk. “I will now have to kick your big scaly green butt.”

  The dragon reared up, but Rokk stepped in to meet him. He wrapped his three arms around the dragon’s long neck and twisted, hurling the beast into the wall of the yard with a thunderous BOOM! Rokk immediately charged in, but the dragon lashed out with its tail and knocked the robot off his feet. THUNK! Penelope gasped and gripped Anne’s arm.

  Rokk rolled three times but righted himself in time to deflect an incoming blow from the dragon. The two opponents backed off and circled each other for a moment. They were evenly matched. The dragon had a definite size advantage, but Rokk was able to counter with speed and technique.

  The dragon charged.

  Rokk caught its front leg and with a great heave of strength sent the dragon up and over the wall and into a small kiosk with a mighty CRASH! This brought a cheer from everyone gathered in the alley.

  Rokk leapt the wall and pummeled the dragon with his three fists.

  The dragon knocked Rokk to the ground with its horns and stomped on him with its massive feet. CRUNCH! CRUNCH! CRUNCH! For a brief moment all seemed lost. Then Rokk kicked up and sent the dragon tumbling through the air and back down to the hard stones of the plaza.

  WHAM!

  As the two titans struggled, Jocelyn placed a hand on Anne’s shoulder. “Anne?”

  “Yes?” said Anne, unable to tear her eyes from the fight.

  “If… if you do encounter my sister again, keep in mind that nothing is written in stone, not even the outcome of a quest. You always have choices, even in an official confrontation. And whatever Evelyn has become… well, please remember that she did dedicate at least part of her life to protecting this quest. I would just ask that you take that into account, should you find yourself with a decision to make.”

  Anne faced Jocelyn. “I just want to finish the quest. I honestly don’t want anyone to get hurt, not even the Matron.”

  Jocelyn smiled sadly. “Thank you, dear.”

  A loud CRACK! brought their attention back to the confrontation in the landing zone. Rokk had blocked yet another strike from the dragon’s tail, and now he punched the dragon in the side with his two right fists and sent it reeling.

  “Run, run as fast as you can! You can’t catch me. I’m a PAL series robot with hydraulic limbs,” Rokk chanted. Then he turned and sped off in the other direction.

  The dragon gave chase.

  “That’s our cue,” said Jocelyn, and she led the others out of the alley. Everyone ran straight to the center of the yard.

  “Now what?” said Anne.

  “Now your sparrow transfers the encrypted coordinates to me, and I do the actual work of sending you to your destination,” said Nana.

  “Please,” said Jeffery, popping into view. “Everyone knows all the real work is done before you ever receive the destination, encrypted or not. If it were left to the dragons, no one would ever get anywhere.”

  Nana snorted. “This coming from a tiny bird who lives in someone else’s smelly old glove.”

  “Hey, that’s tiny magickal bird, thank you very much,” chirped Jeffery. “And I’ll have serious words with anyone who disrespects my gauntlet.”

  “If you like words so much, I have two for you,” said Nana. “The first word is barbecued and the second word is wings.”

  “Big talk for an oversized flying lizard with bad breath,” said Jeffery.

  “Jeffery, be quiet and let Nana concentrate,” said Anne.

  “Fine,” said Jeffery. “But this isn’t over, you big lump of charcoal.”

  Nana snorted but said nothing. Jeffery flew up and landed on top of Nana’s head. Nana closed her eyes. Ann
e looked to both Penelope and Hiro, and they nodded their readiness. The three of them formed a line, with Anne at the front, since she would be the first to travel.

  “How long will this take?” Anne whispered to Jocelyn, not wishing to disturb Nana’s concentration.

  “It’s difficult to say,” Jocelyn whispered back. “There are many variables to take into account, and the calculations must be absolutely precise. The slightest mistake could result in—”

  Nana’s eyes snapped open. “Got it.”

  “Really?” said Anne. “That’s great. How soon can you—”

  But Anne’s question was cut off by the roar of a green fireball.

  She was really starting to hate that.

  THE ADVENTURER’S GUIDE TO FINAL BATTLES OFFERS THE FOLLOWING PIECE OF WISDOM:

  Make sure you win. Or at the very least, make sure you don’t lose.

  The Throne Without a Crown

  As the flames dissipated, Anne was instantly aware of two things: One, she was only a step away from almost certain death, and two, she was alone.

  Between the moon and the stars above and the soft illumination of the Big Glowing Field of Magick filtering up from below, she had enough light to see that her feet were precariously perched on a narrow ledge. Penelope and Hiro were nowhere to be seen.

  Anne inched backward till she felt the solid wall behind her. She looked around. The rock face rose some twenty feet high. To the left, the ledge continued around a bend and out of sight, and to the right there was a wide gap. It all felt vaguely familiar, and then it struck her. She was back at Saint Lupin’s. This was the ledge where she had fallen four and a half days earlier, and from which Jocelyn had rescued her, except now she was on the other side of the gap.

  Anne held up her gauntlet-hand. “Jeffery, how much time is left?”

  “Twenty-nine minutes,” Jeffery chirped as he appeared. “Hey, wow, nice view.”

  “Why are we back at Saint Lupin’s?”

  He flapped his wings at her. “Hey, don’t look at me. I gave Nana the encrypted coordinates exactly as I received them.” He hopped onto the cuff of the gauntlet and kicked the silver medallion. “Stupid prophecy medallion.”

  “And where are Pen and Hiro?”

  Jeffery peered over the ledge. “Well, hopefully not down there.”

  “Jeffery!”

  “What? I mean it. I hope not. That would be horrible. I mean, not just for us, but for them, too. Anyway, they’re probably wherever you were supposed to end up. The final destination place.”

  “But I’m supposed to be there, too!” cried Anne.

  “So why did you come here, then?”

  Anne slumped against the rock face. “We’re doomed.”

  “Only if you lose. Or violate Section 27 of the quest contract. Or deliberately set a fire in an enclosed space. Your insurance doesn’t cover that, and the deductible is outrageous.”

  It couldn’t end like this. Not stranded here on the side of the Saint Lupin’s tier, waiting to be rescued (again). Not with Penelope and Hiro who-knows-where, waiting in vain for Anne to arrive with the key so they could finish the quest. Not while the Matron was still out there trying to—

  The Matron.

  Anne straightened. “We need to get to the Manor.”

  “And do what?” said Jeffery. “I can’t summon Nana, and neither of us knows how to call a portal.”

  “If my hunch is right, we don’t need either. The Matron keeps showing up everywhere we go, right? But we’ve seen no evidence of her using dragons or portals. If we can discover how she’s been traveling all over the Hierarchy, we might be able to use that method ourselves.”

  Anne scanned the smooth rock face. There was no way she could climb it by herself.

  She glanced along the ledge. “Where does this lead to?”

  “I don’t know. Somewhere in that direction.”

  Anne rolled her eyes. She started along the ledge, hoping to find a place where she could climb. The ledge narrowed in places, but thankfully no other sections were missing. After several minutes of hurried shuffling, she came to a tunnel.

  Anne peered down the dark passageway. “Where do you think this goes?”

  “Beats me,” said Jeffery.

  Perhaps the tunnel led to the surface, or perhaps it led nowhere. For all Anne knew, the ledge circled the side of the tier with no way up. As she stood in the opening trying to decide what to do, a light breeze emerged from it and tickled her arm.

  That was it.

  Air flowing through the tunnel meant there must be another opening, and with any luck it would lead her topside.

  She entered.

  Jeffery’s bright, multicolored glow helped Anne navigate the dark passage. The floors and walls were smooth and straight, with no doorways or offshoots as far as Anne could see. The only notable feature was that it sloped steadily—not upward toward the surface, as she had hoped, but downward. She increased her pace, her footsteps echoing down the long corridor and, even with Jeffery’s glow, keeping her right hand on the wall as a guide.

  After several minutes of near running, she began to despair that she had made a terrible mistake, and that possibly her hunch about the Matron having another means of travel was wrong, too, when her foot kicked a small stone. Then another. And another. Rubble was strewn across the floor, and soon her hand hit empty space. A rupture in the wall. Someone (or something) had broken through, and another tunnel led away to the side.

  “What’s this?” asked Anne.

  “Looks like a mine shaft,” said Jeffery.

  She peered inside. “Do you think it leads to the surface?”

  “I could go check.”

  The mines were a labyrinth, and Anne had no time for wrong turns. She stepped into the opening, but she couldn’t sense any flow of air. That probably meant the way was blocked. But the only blocked mine shaft she knew about was…

  Shaft Eleven! Where she’d hidden from what she thought was a roaming dragon. If this was indeed that shaft, it suggested the Matron had been down here before. In fact, maybe she was still coming down here. Maybe the mine shaft wasn’t as “caved in” as everyone had been led to believe. After all, the only evidence was a boarded-up entrance and a threat of punishment for anyone who went near it. If the Matron really did have a secret means of traveling all over the Hierarchy, what better place to hide it than down here, where no one else would ever stumble across it? With renewed purpose, Anne returned to the main tunnel, raced forward…

  And hit a dead end two minutes later.

  A black wall.

  The air was still flowing, but it seemed to be flowing directly into the wall itself. Anne suppressed a cry of frustration. Her mistake had quite likely cost her the quest. She pounded a fist on the wall—

  —and leapt away as a blue grid appeared.

  Just like at the Infinite Tower.

  She reached out tentatively and ran her hand along the surface. It felt like the same material as the Infinite Tower. Acting on instinct, she typed the letters N-O-D-O-O-R into the grid. The words ACCESS GRANTED flashed, and the wall became fluid.

  Anne had no idea where this would take her, but she didn’t hesitate.

  She plunged into the entrance.

  Anne entered a large, circular room. The floor, walls, and ceiling were mostly tiled in white except for three evenly spaced sections of smooth black stone, including the one through which she had just entered, and a large circle of glass in the center of the floor. The space felt like a tomb that had lain sealed and undisturbed for hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of years.

  Seven smooth white pillars formed a semicircle around the glass section. They were about as wide as an iron knight and rose from the floor at an angle. Light filtered up through the glass, illuminating the room. Anne moved to the edge of the glass and cautiously looked down. Currents of magick roiled and crashed together in the BGFM, sending up brightly colored flares. She was standing at the bottom of the Saint Lupin’s t
ier.

  “Jeffery, what is this place?” Anne asked.

  No response. In fact, only at that moment did she realize he was no longer with her.

  “Activate GPS,” she said, but nothing happened.

  Anne concluded he must be blocked from coming out of the gauntlet again, like when they were at the Infinite Tower. Or more specifically, when they were inside the tower, now that she thought about it. Perhaps it had to do with being inside certain spaces. If so, and if this room was one of those spaces, then she was truly on her own.

  Pressing onward, Anne walked over and examined the pillars more closely. Were these elevators? Did they connect to the Manor? As she neared the first pillar, she noticed something she hadn’t seen from the entrance. Words were engraved at the base:

  Below the words was a small rectangular hole.

  A keyhole.

  Heart racing, Anne held up the gauntlet and braced herself. “Activate key.”

  The key appeared in the air, and she grabbed it with the gauntlet. Holding the key firmly, she bent down and inserted it into the keyhole. It turned with a soft click. Seams suddenly appeared along the surface of the white pillar, forming the outline of a hatch, which opened and swung upward. The interior of the pillar was hollow, an inner chamber lined with cushions that formed a couch or bed of sorts.

  “Congratulations.”

  Anne spun around. The Matron stood in front of the shimmering black door. The one that Anne had opened and used. She had let the Matron inside.

  “Don’t feel too bad,” said the Matron, seeming to read Anne’s thoughts. “If you hadn’t let me in, I’d eventually have found my own way.”

  “But—but what are you doing here?” Anne asked. “I thought you would be at the final destination.”