Story Thieves (20 page)

His light spell didn't do much to illuminate more than a few feet in front of them, and did even less behind them. Glancing back, Owen couldn't see the entrance, despite it being broad daylight outside. For some reason his mouth felt really dry, and he wanted nothing more than to run back out the way they'd come and never return.

Hopefully the book was almost done, because this was
not
turning out to be as much fun as he'd originally thought. There was much less awesome magic and science, and
way
too much almost dying. Had the books always been this dangerous?

And even if they had, where was Nobody, anyway? Wasn't he supposed to be bringing Kiel and the Magister back? And seriously, what had happened to Bethany? Was she ever going to come back for him? Or had she decided to punish him by
leaving him in the book to die some horrible death in the cave? Was she reading the seventh book right now, laughing at him?

Or worse, was she in trouble, and couldn't help him even if he needed it, just like he couldn't help her?

Nobody said Owen might be stuck in the book until the end. Fine. He'd just live out the rest of the story as quickly as he could, then hopefully find Nobody or Bethany waiting for him. And if Bethany
was
in trouble, then all the more reason to get things wrapped up here so he could get back and find out.

None of these thoughts were making him feel better, so Owen clutched his irritated spell book closer to his chest and tried to put them out of his mind.

It felt like years before they actually found something, though it was probably just months. Or minutes. One of the two. But gradually they began to notice odd breaks in the cave. Here or there, instead of rock, there'd be just a hint of something metallic, as if the rock were some sort of fake covering. Owen knocked on the rock, and it felt real, but why was there metal behind it? And metal, in Magisteria? They always used wood or stone in their buildings. Metal was far too scientific.

“Look,” Charm said, pointing just ahead into the darkness.
“There's something behind that wall right there.” Owen followed her to the spot, and carefully, slowly reached out to touch what felt like glass.

“Is that . . . a screen?” he asked.

“A computer monitor,” Charm told him. “It hasn't had power in years, looks like. But I'm starting to think this isn't the First Magician's home. I think it's some kind of Science Prison.”

“For who?” Owen said. “Him or us?”

“Let's not ruin that surprise,” Charm said, powering up her ray guns.

Agh.
Why couldn't this part of the mission just be easy and not potentially kill them?! Didn't readers want to have a nice chapter of nothing bad happening?

The walls crumbled worse the farther they went, until finally the cave stone stopped altogether, and Owen's light spell revealed steel floors, walls, and ceiling. Huge, old computers lined the floor, stacked on top of one another as if they had no better use. Broken glass bottles and tubes were everywhere, with burn marks around some of them, as if someone had destroyed a laboratory.

But the worst thing of all was the bodies.

“NOPE, I'M LEAVING!” Owen shouted when he saw the first one.

“Calm down!” Charm said. “It's just a Science Soldier!” She kicked the robot lying on the ground with a missing head. “See? Robots! What's there to worry about?”

“There are, like, fifty of them,” Owen said. “What took them out, Charm? And what will that thing do to us?”

“The enemy of my enemy isn't my enemy,” she told him, then stepped over the robotic bodies to move on, her ray guns held high.

“That's not how that phrase goes,” Owen whispered after her, then hurried to catch up.

The robotic bodies grew more frequent until they just about blocked the tunnel forward. Charm began to yank the robots off of one another, trying to clear a way, then gave Owen a questioning look. He sighed, then helped her carry Science Soldier remains out of the way, just enough so they could climb through.

“We're going to die here, aren't we?” he said as they carried the last body away.

“Whatever happened here, happened years ago,” she told him. “Look at the layer of dust. There's no way whatever did this is still here.”

Owen groaned loudly. “What did I tell you about jinxing us?”

“You never used to be this nervous,” Charm told him. “Stop worrying. Logic is logic, whether it sounds positive or not. There's just no chance that something would have destroyed all these things, then left them for this long. It wouldn't make sense.”

Something clanked behind them, and they both froze.

“Do you see what you did?” Owen whispered at her.

“It's just the robots settling,” Charm told him. “Stop being paranoid.”

He gave her a dark look. “You know that we just effectively blocked our own way out by moving those bodies, right?”

“Of course I knew that,” she said, clearly lying. She gave him an irritated look, then pushed him farther into the cave. “It'll be fine. The First Magician will probably be just like the Magister, nice and friendly.”

A few steps past the pile, and Owen stopped so quickly that Charm plowed right into him, knocking both of them to the ground.

The light wasn't good, but it'd been clear enough to show Owen exactly how much of the First Magician was still around to be nice and friendly. Owen raised his gaze from a skeleton foot, to a skeleton leg, then up to the skeleton's completely bony
body, seated on what looked to be a throne entirely formed from circuit boards or something. The skeleton held some sort of magical wand in one hand, and wore a metal bracelet that looked almost like Charm's computer watch on the other.

“Or, he could just be dead,” Owen said, strangely relieved. “Looks like we're not going to find out much from him.”

Charm stared at the body for a moment, then shook her head. “Nope. You can do this.”

“Do what?”

“Bring him back.” She pointed at the spell book under his arm. “You know. Magic.”

Owen blinked, then blinked again. “Um . . . what?”

S
light turn?”
Bethany screamed up at Kiel. “I thought you had this!”

“I do!” Kiel shouted. “Just not quite as quickly as I'd hoped!”

The giant shook Kiel and the dragon up and down, then threw them both straight at Bethany, who gasped and covered herself with her two books.

A powerful wind almost knocked her off her feet, and she looked up to find the dragon frantically flapping four new pairs of wings, along with its original two, in order to right itself. All six of the wings glowed red from Kiel's magic as the dragon came to a halt just a foot above Bethany's head, then launched back into the sky.

“I told you!” Kiel yelled. “I have this handled!”

The dragon climbed so quickly that it shot right past the giant's head, flying too high for the giant to actually reach. The
giant roared in anger, bent its massive legs, then did maybe the worst possible thing it could do: It jumped right into the air. All ten million pounds of it.

The entire world slowed down as Bethany's mind exploded. When that thing landed, not only would the town be destroyed from the impact, but people would feel the tremor for
hundreds
of miles. Not to mention that everyone anywhere close was just going to be completely buried in rock and goblins.

All the blood drained from Bethany's face as she dropped
Emma
, then sprinted forward, right to the last place in the world she should be going.

The giant strained to grab Kiel at the top of its jump, its massive hand just missing the dragon. Even free of the giant's hand, though, there wasn't much Kiel could do about the giant crashing back to the ground.

But maybe Bethany could.

She stopped directly under the giant's now plummeting feet and opened her remaining book.

There was no way this would work.
No way.
She was going to die, and so was everyone in town. This could
not work
.

She did it anyway.

The giant came crashing down right on top of her. Bethany
raised one hand into the air and dropped
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
onto the ground beneath her, stepping onto a page. Then she cringed and waited for the giant to hit.

The moment the giant touched Bethany's hand, they both went plowing right into the pages of the book, exploding into the middle of the book's ocean.

The force of the giant's fall sent both monster and Bethany rocketing into the deep, dark depths of the water, but Bethany didn't wait around. Without even bothering to figure out which way was up, she immediately jumped out of the book and back to the real world, her clothes soaked, but about as uncrushed as she possibly could have hoped.

Just to make sure, she frantically patted down her arms, legs, and head, then shrieked in absolute joy.

“KIEL!” she shouted. “Did you see that? I did it!”

“Bethany?” Kiel said, landing beside her with his dragon. “You may want to—”

“I just beat the giant!” she shouted. “ME! After it jumped up to catch you, I took the entire thing down! It's in the middle of a fictional ocean now! I can't even believe that worked!”

“Bethany?”

“Wow, my heart is racing!” she said, one hand on her chest.
“I should have died! We
all
should have died! That was so amazing!”

Kiel grabbed her by the shoulders, then slowly turned her around.

There, right in front of her, stood the Magister. And behind him were far too many fictional fantasy monsters to count. Griffins. Unicorns. More dragons. Trolls and witches and enormous wolves and knights and huge blobs of monster and too many other things that Bethany didn't even recognize.

“Kiel,” the Magister said, and Bethany couldn't tell if he was happy or sad to see his apprentice. “I thought . . . I believed . . . I am glad you have returned. Both of you. You must now be ready to admit the error of your ways, then?”

“Not exactly,” Kiel said. “It's time to go home, Magi, and put everything back the way we found it here.”

The Magister raised a hand toward Kiel, then dropped it, closing his eyes. He shook his head, and when his eyes opened, any trace of happiness at Kiel's presence was gone. “No,” he said, his voice low. “We will not be returning to that world. It never truly existed, just as none of these creatures' worlds did. And to those who would control us, rule us, I say the time has come to take our lives back.” His eyes hardened. “I don't
understand what sort of power the people of this world have, to create us from nothing, then dictate our lives. But I will do everything I can to make sure that comes to a stop right now.”

“What do you mean?” Bethany said, holding her copy of
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
out like a sword. “What are you going to do?”

The Magister turned to her. “First, as I promised, I'll free all fictional creatures I can find. I've explained the way things work to my friends, here. And they'd like to speak to their creators, much as I'd still like to.” He held out a hand. “Give me Jonathan Porterhouse, and no harm shall come to you.”

Bethany swallowed hard. “What for?”

“He will accompany any and all other writers into a fictional world, where they will be free to live or die as they can.” He spread his hands. “It is the only way to ensure an end to their power, and seems the fairest way to imprison them. After all, it is no more than they have done to us.”

Bethany's eyes went wide. “You can't just send everyone into books! Do you have any idea what would happen?”

“Do you know what happened to me?”
the Magister roared. “Fighting a war for the freedom of my people, only to find none of it is real? Let the writers of this world decide if their
dystopian futures, their dangerous magic, their monsters and stories of terror are so entertaining once it's their
own
life or death they're living out!”

Her legs shaking, Bethany took a step forward. “I'm not going to let you do this,” she said quietly. “I can't.”

“Bethany, don't,” Kiel whispered to her, but she shook her head.

“There's nothing you can do that I can't undo,” she told the Magister. “So go ahead. Steal my power some more. I'll just find a way to put everything back where it belongs, and will keep at it as long as I live.”

“I understand,” the Magister said. “Then I suppose you leave me with no other option.”

“NO!” Kiel shouted, but it was too late. The Magister gestured, and Bethany immediately crumpled to the ground, unmoving.

W
hat's the problem?” Charm said, waving her robotic hand for Owen to hurry up. “We don't have much more time!”

“Give me a minute,” Owen told her, trying not to look at the skeleton sitting on the computer-circuit throne. Kiel had mentioned wanting to bring his parents back to life using magic (before he found out he was a clone of Dr. Verity, of course), but the Magister had always forbidden it, saying that such dark magic led to horrible results. “It's dangerous, this kind of magic.”

“So is letting Dr. Verity destroy all of Magisteria because we didn't find the last key.” She checked her watch. “In just under ten hours, by the way.”

Owen gritted his teeth. “Fine! But if this goes badly, then I'm blaming you.”

“This went badly about a year ago, so blame me all you want.” She moved away to watch back down the cave tunnel the way they'd come in. “I still don't understand why the First Magician would be here, in a cave made with computers and metal. It doesn't make sense. The bars weren't down. He wasn't imprisoned.”