Nocturnal (episode n. 1)

CHAPTER 7

  She ran down the stairs as if her life was at stake, which might actually be the case as far as she knew.

  Once in the atrium, she found out that the wind had succeeded where she had failed, and now the rusted door was wide open and almost unhinged. Chilly blasts swept away the dust, howling like hungry wolves.

  Amanda launched herself toward the doorway, only to be pushed back by the wind. She had to grasp the frame of the door not to fall down, and pull herself out with the strength of her arms, but once there the situation got no better. She found herself pushed against the wall, breathless, and for an endless instant she thought she was going to suffocate, until she was able to turn her head and finally breathe again.

  Obviously she wasn't going anywhere like that. She thought that maybe it would have been better to go back in, and at least make use of the feeble protection of those unstable walls. She was about to do that when a crash from within drew her attention, as a large chunk of plaster fell down from the roof, filling the atrium of a whitish cloud, quickly dissolved by the wind.

  What was better? Being carried away by the wind or buried alive in an abandoned building? Hard choice.

  The small but strong arm that caught her from under an armpit, lifting her bodily, startled her. Her scream got lost in the wind at first, then could clearly be heard when she was suddenly flung into a little quiet oasis.

  «Stop shouting or I push you back down», a very familiar voice grunted. Amanda turned to see Shim scowling at her. In spite of the constant whistle of the wind all around, his voice had reached her clearly, thanks to the invisible bubble which surrounded the carpet, shielding them from the awful weather.

  «I thought you hated flying», she said, confused, surprised, but most of all happy to see him there.

  «I hope you will still remember when I tell you what I think of this bravado of yours», he replied. «Now we have to go away from here quickly.»

  He was right. Flying carpets where enchanted so that they protected their passengers against bad weather conditions, but they weren't designed to fly in an hurricane, and soon the protection would fade out, considering the hard challenge it was facing.

  «Were are we going?» she asked.

  «Central!» he replied quickly before concentrating again on piloting.

  They raised, even though all but steadily. The carpet was violently flung around, and even though its magic kept them on board, it looked like they could be thrown away at any moment, so much that Amanda flattened herself as much as possible on it, as if this could somehow protect her from what was happening. Around them, the hurricane unleashed its fury. She didn't think she'd ever seen something like that in her life.

  Rain had started pouring, and now the wind was pushing towards them compact bodies of water which looked almost like waves. The carpet seemed to be floating in water rather than flying, like an odd surfboard facing higher waves than it had been designed for.

  The sky was black, engulfed by clouds crowding together like people trying to conquer the front line in the audience of a concert, though the show they wanted to see was quite different.

  A violent blast almost made the carpet topple over, and left Amanda wondering what would happen if it did. She didn't think the magic would be of any help against gravity in that case, and probably they would crash on the street below, or maybe be flung away by the wind alone.

  Shim looked calm and self-assured. In truth he was just entirely focused on what he was doing, all of his efforts taken by the task of keeping the carpet steady and preventing the contents of his stomach to come back the way it had gone in. He would have cut a very poor figure if he had retched, but most of all he wasn't sure he could be able to pilot and vomit at the same time, and it was this thought which helped him the most to keep his last lunch down.

  «There!»

  Amanda's scream drew his attention on a dark shape moving towards them. He pulled up the carpet abruptly, just in time to avoid a door which must have been stripped away from some house and was now floating freely, waiting to crash against something or someone. He heard a muffled thump as it hit the rear edge of the carpet, which steered unexpectedly and almost made him lose control. The air was getting wet even in there, and some raindrops were already pushing their way through the barrier, a clear sign that it was about to stop existing at all.

  Reaching the headquarters was unthinkable, they had to find a nearby place to stop to, and stay there until the weather improved. If it was ever going to.

  «Down there!» Amanda shouted again, trying to show him something he couldn't see at first. Then he noticed. At their right there was a place in which clouds seemed to be thinner, as if there was an area the hurricane wasn't hitting.

  He immediately steered in that direction, hoping it was really the case and that they could be able to be there before the protection of the carpet was completely broken.

  When they got there, it was like breaking a barrier between two different worlds. The carpet poked out of the storm in a zone that seemingly had been left untouched by it, not even brushed by the wind.

  There they would have been safe, if they hadn't been a second too late.

  The magic of the carpet gave way completely, and a sudden burst of wind grabbed it and threw it away, towards the safety they were looking for, but not the way they wanted to go there.

  Shim did his best to stay in control, and almost succeeded, but it wasn't enough. The carpet crashed to the ground, making Amanda roll away and sending the dwarf headfirst against a tree.

  She was the first to get up. She was confused and hurting, she probably had bruises in places she hadn't even known the sheer existence of so far, but she was alive.

  She look around, searching for Shim, and in doing that she finally realized where she was: in front of the university.

  Then she saw the dwarf, collapsed against the trunk of one of the trees lining the courtyard. She rushed to check if he was fine. He was unconscious and had a vicious cut on his forehead – the collision must have been quite hard to do such damage to his hard skull – but at least he was breathing. There wasn't much she could do for him but pulling him to a covered place before wind and rain got there as well. Neither she had a lot to say about the place to choose: the university seemed to be the only building the hurricane wasn't hitting. The actual problem was how to get in, but that she would worry about once she was there.

  She lifted the dwarf from his armpits, trying not to shake him too much, and started pulling, surprised by his heavy weight. She could only take a few steps before she had to surrender to the truth: she wasn't going anywhere like that.

  Then her gaze fell on the carpet, heaped not too far. She hurriedly fetched it and managed to pull Shim on it, then she grabbed one edge and started pulling again. The weight wasn't changed, obviously, but this way she was able to move him more easily, so much so that she reached the stairway to the entrance. Then the carpet became useless, and she had to lift the dwarf little by little, step by step, to the archway. She got there breathless, ready to look for something with which to break a window and enter. To her big surprise, she didn't need to. The door was closed, but unlocked.

  Even though she didn't understand, she wasn't going to complain. She opened it and brought in Shim, who didn't seem about to wake up. She rolled the carpet and set it under his head. Now she needed to find something to cover him. In the basement there were sheets used every now and then to cover desks and furniture. They weren't the best choice, but there was nothing else she could think of, so she headed to the stairs, opened the basement door and stood there astonished for a sight she would never have been able to foresee.

  The center of the room had been almost completely emptied, and now there stood a large metal frame in which several crystals were mounted. In the middle of it, a man wearing a ceremonial tunic. He stood with his arms open and flung upward, and she could almost hear power crackling around him as he murmured barely audible and completely unintelligible
words. Crystals were reacting to whatever he was doing, pulsing with a dark and regular light, like a huge heart beating in the chest of a giant. Something that looked like the before-unheard crossbreed between light and smoke was spiraling away from the frame, rising to the ceiling where it seemed to disappear.

  Even though she had never seen something of the like, she didn't need anyone to suggest her what it was. After all it couldn't just be an accident that the university was right in the middle of the quiet zone.

  The man seemed to be so absorbed in what he was doing that he was unaware of her presence. Amanda stood for a while, uncertain about what to do. She had no idea of what could happen if she interrupted the magician, but she didn't think things could be any worse than they already were.

  She unsheathed her wand, that she had managed not to lose this time. It was very much alike the ones carried along by police officers: its bolts stunned their targets but caused no permanent damages.

  She took aim and was about to shoot when a sensual voice whispered «Don't.»