Good Ogre (23 page)

“My good ogre,” the Maelshadow continued. “It was so easy for him to deceive you. Why? Because you, Max, had already deceived yourself. You thought the Magrus
would welcome you as a hero? You thought that was who you really were? The heir to Maximilian Sporazo's throne?”

“I made a mistake. I thought I couldn't be happy unless I was a wizard,” Max replied. “But I was wrong. Magic isn't who I am—it's just something I can do.”

“Not for long.”

“Leave him alone!” Sarah yelled. “Cut me down and face me yourself, you coward!”

“See? I was right to bring her here to watch me break you,” the Maelshadow continued. “Because that is what you truly care about, isn't it? That is what will wound you the deepest.”

“I don't want to talk to you anymore,” Max said, tightening his grip on the sword.

The Maelshadow smiled, turning his hooded head toward the storm outside. “We are heartbeats away, Max, and there will be no going back. I will try and keep you alive long enough for you to know you have failed.”

Wayne started across the floor and Max chanced a quick look behind him. Ricky and the others had pushed Princess through the portal.
That's one,
Max said to
himself. Then he saw the wrestlers climb through and disappear after her. Ricky was the last.

“Take him out, Spencer,” Ricky shouted, then he turned and followed the others. Meanwhile, Wayne was closing the distance with Dirk and Dwight. Dwight stepped forward with his axe, but Dirk put his hand on the dwarf's shoulder and announced, “Dude, I got this.” He swung Glenn around and strummed a chord, clearing his throat:

Stupid Wayne, fighting the dwarf and me,

But did you forget that you can't see?

At least not us, 'cause you're big and dumb,

And we be fading with each new strum!

“‘We be fading with each new strum'? What kind of stupid lyric is that?” the dwarf grumbled. But suddenly Wayne froze, his eyes wide. Dirk and Dwight were invisible!

The Maelshadow walked forward, extending his arm. A sword grew from it—a smoldering crimson blade that reflected off of Max's armor. Then he leapt
forward and Max brought his own weapon up to block the blow. The impact nearly knocked Penumbra out of Max's hand, and he spun around, the tip of his sword inches above the floor. Max barely managed to bring the blade up again as the Maelshadow lunged. The Lord of Shadows drove past Max's defense, and the crimson sword struck Max's helm. The blow sent him sprawling backward, his ears ringing. The Maelshadow walked over to him as Max struggled to his feet.

“Rezormoor's armor is well conceived,” the Mael­shadow said. “But it assumes the wearer knows how to fight with a blade.”

Max had had just about enough insults, and he lunged forward in a series of frantic attacks. But he was off-balance, and the Maelshadow easily parried his blows, finally stepping to the side as Max stumbled forward, bringing his own sword around and striking Max on the back.

“No!” Sarah screamed as Max flew toward the edge of the room. He reached out and grabbed a column, barely saving himself from going over the edge. Max turned, leaning against the column for support. His arm
already burned and his breathing was fast and heavy. He caught a glimpse of Wayne, who was walking around the room cautiously as Dirk's song continued:

And don't think you'll find us by the sound of my voice,

'Cause it's everywhere and you've got no choice,

So think on that as you stumble around;

You've been owned by the Bard of renown!

Max stood and brought the sword up, moving away from the edge of the room. The Maelshadow came at him, easily beating through his defense and striking him again and again: in the arm, across the chest, in the head, on the other arm, across the thigh. Max teetered this way and that as the Maelshadow hammered away at his armored skin, finally knocking him to the floor with a vicious blow to his leg. Max lost his grip on Penumbra and the sword slid across the floor. The Maelshadow leapt, landing on Max's chest and driving the point of the crimson sword to his breastplate. Max could feel the heat of the weapon through the armor, but he was helpless as the Lord of Shadows pushed the unholy blade harder.

“Max, get up!” Sarah cried. “Do something.”

Max was exhausted. He closed his eyes and hoped the armor would hold. After what seemed forever, the Maelshadow spun away, throwing the blade across the room in disgust. “This is pointless!” the Maelshadow cried, and it was the first time Max had ever heard emotion in the ancient and horrible voice. “I cannot penetrate your armor.”

Max rose to see Dirk and Dwight standing beside Sarah. The dwarf swung his axe and cut Sarah free, causing the Maelshadow to whirl at the sound.

“Fool ogre!” he bellowed. “Your mind is weak to be so easily deceived, and I have grown weary of this.” He raised a hooded arm at the trio of friends.

“Wait!” Max cried. “Don't hurt them! I'll surrender to you! I'll remove the armor!”

“Max, no!” Sarah cried.

The Maelshadow hesitated. “On what condition?”

“That you allow them through the portal.”

The Maelshadow lowered his arm. “And what do you think to accomplish in the moments we have left? Don't you know I'll simply walk through the portal after them?”

“I'll take that chance,” Max said, climbing to his feet.

“So be it, then,” the Lord of Shadow replied. He moved his hand and Max's friends launched through the air toward the open portal. Sarah just managed to reach out and grab the cage with the monkey in it before she flew past.

“Max, I—” she shouted, but she was through the portal with the others before she could finish. To Max's relief the temple was empty now—his friends had made it home. That left him with only one thing to do. Max raised his arm and touched the blue symbol. It glowed for a moment before the armor retracted, collapsing into the wristband.

“Clever,” the Maelshadow said. He walked over to Penumbra and kicked it. The weapon slid across the floor and off the edge. He then turned to Wayne.

“Come and join me, ogre.”

Wayne walked to where Max stood, unarmored and defenseless. Max looked at the amulet hanging around Wayne's neck—it glowed black. Evil. Max turned to him. “I don't know why you did this,” he said. “But I have to believe you were used somehow. Maybe you didn't know
it at the time, or maybe you still don't. But you were good once. And you were my friend. And so no matter what happens next, you should know that friends don't turn on each other. I don't know what the Maelshadow promised you, but I'm pretty sure friendship wasn't part of it. So I forgive you—even though you might have destroyed everything that matters to me.”

The Maelshadow threw his head back and began to laugh. “So naive. So
human
. How have you survived so long? But it doesn't matter. We are mere moments now from a new beginning. How does it feel, Max, to have failed so completely!”

“Irony!” Max shouted, reaching into the
Codex
for the last Prime Spell. The power of it shot out from Max, cracking already damaged columns. He had used the spell before, unpracticed and afraid when the robot unicorn and her hunters had threatened his friends. But he wasn't the same person anymore, and he imposed his will on what would happen. He reached between the realms with the only spell powerful enough to do so, and found what he was looking for. He brought it back, and suddenly the gracon was standing before Max. Peaches saw the
Maelshadow at once, and lunged at him. Peaches, a creature born of shadow, was now free to exact its revenge.

“What?” the Maelshadow cried as the gracon smashed into him, driving the lord of Shadows to the floor. The lava that seemed to run across the gracon's skin burned bright red as it delivered blow after blow. The Maelshadow shrieked, and the world suddenly dimmed. Monstrous shadows flew from the form of the Maelshadow, slipping along the walls and crawling out of sight.

“Ogre!” The Maelshadow howled. “Help me!”

A blade suddenly sprang from one of the Maelshadow's sleeves, but the gracon grabbed hold of his arm and brought his great horn across it, severing it easily. The blade melted into a pool of black as it fell to the floor, seeping into the cracks. Then the gracon sprang to its feet and tossed the Lord of Shadows into a far wall. The impact cracked the stone itself, and dozens of shadows leapt from the robed figure and scattered across the walls and ceiling.

Wayne stepped toward Max and grabbed him. “I could force you to call him off.”

“I wouldn't even if I could.”

“I know.” Then Wayne shoved Max hard. But not
toward the edge as Max had feared. Instead, he stumbled toward the portal. Max reached out and grabbed hold of the frame, barely catching himself as his legs slipped through. He hung on, fighting against the pull of the vortex.

Across the room Peaches drove the Maelshadow into one of the ragged edges of his throne. The Lord of Shadows howled in rage and pain as shadows flew from him. Hundreds of them, flowing across the floor and walls like a black river running off the edge of the world.

The gracon turned to Max. “Justice.” Then Peaches pulled the Maelshadow free of the spikes and walked him to the edge. He didn't hesitate before leaping off, carrying himself and what remained of the Lord of Shadows into the nothingness and beyond.

The Maelshadow was gone, but the portal remained open. Max could still lose everything unless he found a way to seal the breach between the realms—but how? He struggled to hang on, watching as Wayne approached. The big kid's amulet pulsated a dark gray.
Still mostly evil,
Max thought. And then he understood, and a smile broke out across his face. Wayne reached up and grabbed the
frame of the portal and began to pull. It shook in his giant hands, but it began to close!

“Hurry!” Max called out, watching the portal shrinking around him. Wayne quickly compacted the portal to about the size of a window, but then he struggled, the effort growing more difficult with each passing second.

“It's getting harder!” Wayne grunted in frustration.

“Your amulet!” Max exclaimed. Wayne looked down and saw that his Amulet of Alignment had turned a much lighter gray. “You're becoming
good
.”

Wayne pressed harder, the portal closing to about the size of a school desk. Max continued to hold on, feeling the frame diminish under his fingers. But then the portal froze, and Wayne was forced to let go, exhausted.

“There's no more I can do,” he said, sounding defeated.

Max hung there, the impossibility of it threatening to drive him mad. They had come so far! If they didn't close the portal now none of it mattered. He knew there were only seconds left—only a matter of moments before all would be lost. He looked at Wayne and suddenly had an idea.

“Kick me!” Max yelled. He watched the surprised expression on Wayne's face turn into understanding.
Max had hoped for a moment to prepare himself, but the big kid didn't hesitate, delivering a well-placed boot to Max's face. Stars exploded around his vision and he fell backward, frantically reaching out to grab the rope. He felt it fly past, then landed on something softer than he'd expected.

“Told you he wouldn't find the rope,” Ricky said.

Max raised his head to see that he was lying on a mound of wrestling mats. Then a much larger body landed with a thud next to him, nearly launching him back into the air. It was Wayne, clutching the Shadric Portal in both hands. The magical tempest that had been its center, however, was gone.

“I closed it!” Wayne exclaimed. He turned to Max. “Sorry about the kick to the face.”

Max managed a smile even though his eyes were watering from the pain in his nose. “Probably the least I deserved,” he said.

“How'd you do it?” Dirk asked, eyeing Wayne suspiciously.

Sarah was on her feet and headed toward the one-time Ogre, payback in her eyes.

“No!” Max shouted. “He saved me—us.”

“He's the one who started it,” Dwight added.

“Maybe,” Max admitted. “But he also finished it. He was the only one who could do it.”

“Bad Ogre,” Moki chastised.

“And the kick to the face?” Megan asked, her eyebrow raised.

“I needed a little more evil to finish the job,” Wayne admitted.

“Good Ogre,” Moki said, changing his mind. The others began laughing in spite of themselves.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

FRIENDS

T
HE SCOREBOARD READ
E
AGLES 56,
Panthers 7. Max was sitting beside Sarah on the football-field bleachers, watching as Wayne smashed through the offensive line and sacked the quarterback—again. Dirk was next to Princess, while Melvin, Megan, and Sydney sat in the row directly in front of them. Sydney was holding Moki, who had no idea what the rules were for football but liked all the whistle blowing. Even Dwight had shown up, with his strange-looking dog in tow. It turned out that while Puff had learned to shed his scales and take on his true dragon form, he'd lost the ability to become a human. When he tried, he ended up a fluff dragon again—but with a gap in his scales just large enough that he could make the transformation to full-sized dragon any time
he wanted. Max had cautioned that doing so in Madison might not be the best idea.

It had been two weeks since the Cataclysm—but only Max and his friends knew that was what the strange event was called. To the rest of the town it was simply known as the Lost Weekend. After Wayne closed the portal in time, the town slowly reverted to its old self. That didn't mean Max could look at Mrs. Frankelburt quite the same, however, finding the image of the howler with the rolling pin hard to shake.

After much debate as to the cause of the Lost Weekend, it was Mr. Magar, the high school chemistry teacher, who announced that the loss of consciousness and accompanying hallucinations had been caused by a gas pocket that had ruptured underground. Many of the citizens of Madison recalled strange visions as a result, including militarized squirrels and a tornado on top of the school. But with the mystery more or less solved, the town went about its normal business.

Max and his friends had been able to forgive Wayne, although Sarah looked like she wanted to toss him around a couple of times for good measure. The former ogre decided to stay in the Techrus, and found
the football coach more than happy to put him on the team. Dwight offered to let Wayne stay at the Dragon's Den, so that the town's fantasy game shop was home to a dwarf, a dragon, and an ogre. Not that anyone else knew the truth—it was a secret shared by just Max and his friends. That included Ricky and the handful of wrestlers who had joined them in their fight against the Maelshadow. Max had even been offered the job of manager for the wrestling team, and to everyone's surprise he had accepted. He figured it was the least that he could do.

There was a roar from the crowd as Wayne picked up a fumble (he had caused it) and ran for a touchdown. Ricky shouted the loudest; he and the other wrestlers were sitting just above Max, cheering Wayne on. Max smiled and took a look at his friends, both old and new, and for the first time in a long time he realized he was truly happy. He might be a magic-wielding wizard and last living descendant of the arch-sorcerer who created the
Codex
of Infinite Knowability
, but none of that compared with how he felt with his friends. He looked at Sarah and she tilted her head in response, eyeing him with a curious look.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked.

“I was thinking that life is pretty good,” he said.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “It is.”

Two seats over, Princess leaned toward Dirk. She had no memories of her transformation and was bothered by the stories she'd heard. “Was I really a hybrid
nightmare
-unicorn
?” she asked, not for the first time. “It just sounds so . . . horsey.”

“Oh yeah, totally. You were a pretty bad nightmare thingy, but I like you better as a bad unicorn.” Princess arched an eyebrow.

“I'm still not your girlfriend, you know. Even though I tried to eat you again and you're not holding it against me.”

Dirk shrugged. “We could always just hold hands.”

“Let me think about it.” It was about as encouraging a response as Dirk could hope for. He was also working on an “epic” love song. Glenn had transformed back into a dagger (nobody complained about
that
), forcing Dirk to pick up an old guitar and begin teaching himself how to play. Glenn was very supportive of the whole thing.

Later that night Max sat on his bed. He opened
the nightstand where he kept the
Codex of Infinite Knowability
. There was something different about it without the Prime Spells. Max had used every one of them in his battle with the Maelshadow and his army, and now he supposed they were floating somewhere in the umbraverse, free to do whatever Prime Spells did.

Suddenly there was a swirling of lights and Max's old mentor materialized.

“Bellstro!” Max called out. “I didn't know you could appear here!”

“Why?” the spectral wizard asked. “Is it illegal?”

“Er, no.”

“Then listen, because I have something to tell you. When you go against the Maelshadow . . .” But Bellstro paused, studying Max closely. “You already did, didn't you?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“And you defeated him?”

Max shrugged. “I had some help from a very angry gracon named Peaches.”

Bellstro sighed. “I don't think I'm very good at this otherwordly mentor thing.”

“That's not true,” Max replied. “What you said about the spider was really helpful.”

“It was?”

“I mean, you could have just come out and told us about being trapped in a dream world, but you kept it all cryptic and mysterious like a good mentor is supposed to.” That made Bellstro smile.

“I ruined the
Codex
, though,” Max said with a sigh. “It still talks about stuff and all the normal spells are there, but it's different now.”

“The
Codex
has been home to the Sixteen Prime Spells for centuries. It will take some time to get used to not having them around.”

“I suppose,” Max said, and then something his mentor had said caught his attention.

“You mean the
Fifteen
Prime Spells,” Max said, eyeing the old ghost.

“Isn't that what I said? Oh, of course, the
Fifteen
Prime Spells. You're right . . . fifteen.”

“Bellstro . . . ?” Max asked carefully.

“Max, that's not something you're supposed to know about, so just forget I said anything.”

“Too late.”

“You, young man, are going to get me into a lot of trouble.”

“So there really is a sixteenth Prime Spell?” Max pressed. Bellstro sighed and took a seat on the bed next to Max.

“Yes. Or so the rumors go. But it's missing.”

Max frowned. “Does anyone know what it does?”

“No. And perhaps that's the reason it was hidden. Or, some believe that the true purpose of the
Codex
is to gather enough information to find it. Either way, it's not important right now.”

Max thought it over for a few minutes. “Did my father look for it?”

“Yes, Max, he did.”

Max nodded. Later that night as he lay in bed with Moki curled up on the pillow beside him, his mind kept going over the possibility a hidden sixteenth Prime Spell. It was just the sort of thing that a band of battle-proven adventurers might be interested in looking for.
Or,
he thought as he flipped off the light,
we could just play an online game instead.
He and Dirk had never finished the quest to find the Sword of Spectacular Swishiness.

“Either way, we'll do it together,” he said, as he pulled the blanket up. Moki yawned in agreement and then went back to sleep.

Outside, a dark figure with ivory tattoos walked by. It coughed once, enjoying the germ-carrying capacity of the warm evening air. It would be a good year for strep throat, it decided.