Chapter Ten
“Oh dear,” said Gujak, who was still hopping from foot to foot, succeeding only in making Durima more nervous. “You're trapped. You're caught. We're dead.”
“We're not dead,” said Durima in an annoyed voice. “Not yet. There's still a chance we could recover from this.”
Having gotten off the fence, Durima now stood on the floor of the cage. She was right up against the cage's bars, her claws wrapped around them tightly. Although they were covered in dirt and smelled like it, the bars stood as strong as the bars in the catacombs had, if not stronger. They looked newer than the bars of her cell, like they had only been installed in the ground recently.
“We're still dead,” said Gujak. “Dead, dead, dead.”
“Would you shut up?” said Durima. “The mages don't even know we triggered their trap yet. We still have plenty of time to—”
She stopped speaking when she saw that Gujak had gone perfectly still. His large yellow eyes were focused on something behind her, his mouth open with dread, his whole body shaking. It was like he had seen a ghost.
“What are you staring at?” said Durima. She twisted her head over her shoulder to see if she could spot it. “Did you see Master or … damn it …”
A whole crowd of mages—comprised of human and aquarians—was running down from the Arcanium to the graveyard. There had to be at least two dozen of them, divided half and half between the two species, but for once, the humans and aquarians were not fighting amongst themselves. Instead, they were united in their purpose, and their purpose was obvious.
“They're going to kill us!” Gujak moaned, his hands clinging to his face. “This is it. Good bye, cruel world.”
Durima shook her head and returned her attention to the cage. She was looking for a weak spot, any weak spot, that she could try to break. Unfortunately, her lack of familiarity with cages in general meant that she could not spot any part that looked easily breakable.
The only thing she noticed was a large lock on the door. Neither she nor Gujak had a key to unlock it, but she was tempted to summon a massive stone fist from the ground to smash it. She didn't do it, however, because the cage was so small that even if she succeeded in smashing it open, she would probably end up crushing herself in the process.
She glanced over her shoulder again. The mages were drawing ever closer, their wands waving, glowing with suppressed energy. The Institute mages were not waving their wands around (if they even had any), but one look at the sheer hatred in their eyes and Durima knew that they were going to be just as merciless as the humans, if not more so.
Durima turned back to look at the lock. Then an idea occurred to her, one she hadn't considered before. She didn't know if it would work, but she was willing to try anything at this point, no matter how crazy it may have seemed.
“Gujak,” said Durima, grabbing the bars and looking at her partner straight in the eyes. “Can you turn your index finger into a key shape and use it to unlock this lock?”
Gujak stopped dancing around, but he still looked as nervous as a frightened baba raga. “I-I don't know. I've never tried that before. I'm not a locksmith and I don't know if I can concentrate long enough to even try it.”
“Just do it,” said Durima, glancing over her shoulder at the advancing crowd of murderous mages. “It's not like we have anything to lose at this point.”
“Except our lives,” said Gujak, but he was already walking up to the cage anyway, holding up his right index finger, which was starting to transform into a generic key.
When Gujak reached the lock, the transformation of his index finger was complete. He inserted his finger key into the lock and turned.
Durima honestly didn't expect it to work, despite having originally suggested the idea. So when she heard a tiny but audible click and saw the lock come undone, she could hardly believe her eyes.
But Durima, being a practical katabans, recovered from her shock in less than five seconds. Gujak pulled his finger out of the lock, looking just as disbelieving as she felt, and Durima slammed her shoulder into the cage door.
Immediately, the lock snapped and the door flew open. Durima tumbled out of the cage into the dirt, almost crashing into Gujak, but he jumped out of the way just in time. Rubbing the top of her head, Durima got up to her feet and said to Gujak, “What are you staring at? We have to find that grave now before the mages get here.”
As Durima took off in a random direction, Gujak followed, saying as he did so, “But how can we find Braim Kotogs' grave if we don't even know where to look? I mean, there's a mob of crazy mages who want us dead! How is that going to give us time to—”
Gujak was cut off when a figure suddenly appeared directly in their path, like a ghost materializing from thin air. Durima and Gujak were forced to come to a screeching halt when the figure appeared, not because they wanted to, but because they both recognized him instantly and knew there was no way they could get past this particular mortal.
Standing in their way was the Magical Superior himself. He leaned on his staff like an old man, but the magical energy he radiated was just as powerful as before. If anything, he seemed stronger, although that may have been because Durima was feeling weaker than usual at the moment.
“Hello,” said the Magical Superior in a tone that was far too friendly for Durima's tastes. “I see you two have escaped from the catacombs. I don't understand how you did that, but it doesn't really matter.”
Durima looked over her shoulder again. The crowd of angry mages was closer to the graveyard now, so close she could practically see the whites of their eyes. It didn't make her very comfortable, to put it lightly.
“G-Get out of our way,” said Gujak, pointing at the Magical Superior in what he clearly thought was a threatening gesture, but his arm shook so badly that it just made him look pathetic. “Or we'll cut you down where you stand, old man.”
“Cut me down? Without a sword or other type of bladed weapon?” said the Magical Superior in an amused voice. “Of course, I see at least one of you has claws, but you know how powerful I am. Fighting me would be one of the worst decisions you could ever make in your life, or at any rate one of the most painful.”
“He's not bluffing,” said Durima, putting one hand on Gujak's shoulder. “You sense his might as well as I, don't you? He's no god, but if we tried to fight him, he'd probably kill us before we even realized we're dead.”
“I am not seeking to kill either of you,” said the Magical Superior. His eyes flicked over their shoulders. “Although to be perfectly honest, I can't say the same about my students, who look more like an undisciplined horde of lynchers than a group of thoughtful, intellectual scholars.”
Again, Durima looked over her shoulder. At this point, the mages in the front of the crowd had reached the graveyard's walls. They were kept out thanks to Gujak's tree and the walls themselves. That gave Durima and Gujak maybe another minute or two, if even that much, before the mob got inside.
“But I can offer you protection,” said the Magical Superior, holding out a hand, “and freedom, if you would but only tell me why you are here and who your Master is. My students will listen to me because I am their leader. If I tell them to leave you alone, they will, even if they don't want to.”
“We'll never tell you anything,” Durima said. She bared her teeth. “Our loyalty belongs to Master, and to Master alone. We swore an oath never to betray Master under any circumstances.”
“Yeah,” said Gujak, nodding. “We'll never tell you that Master sent us here to find the grave of Braim Kotogs. We're not stupid.”
The Magical Superior smirked. “Collectively, you may not be dumb, but individually, I am afraid that is not the case, if the fact that you just revealed your reason for being here is a reliable indication of your general intelligence.”
Durima punched Gujak in the shoulder. “Idiot! When will you learn that everything you say usually backfires and that I am the one who should do most, if not all, of the t
alking in these kinds of situations?”
Gujak rubbed his shoulder, looking quite ashamed of himself. “I didn't mean to—”
“Why do you want to find the grave of Braim?” said the Magical Superior, interrupting him like Gujak hadn't been speaking at all. “What is so special about his grave that you have to cause so much trouble for us?”
Durima, of course, did not know why Master had told her and Gujak to find this grave, but she wasn't about to let this mortal know that.
She said, “We aren't going to say even one more word about Master or our mission. You don't deserve to know.”
“Perhaps,” said the Magical Superior. “But I can see that my students are already making progress in getting past the few obstacles that lie between them and the graveyard.”
Alarmed, Durima looked over her shoulder for the umpteenth time today. The Magical Superior was right. One of the students, maybe a botamancer, was waving his wand at the tree. Gujak's tree was starting to pull its roots out of the ground, while Junaz, the fox-masked mage, was levitating the cage out of their path.
“I have no doubt that they will make it into here within the next minute,” said the Magical Superior. “The offer still stands. Tell me everything you know about your Master and his plans and I will allow both of you to leave unharmed and with all of your freedoms intact.”
As much as Durima hated to admit it, the Magical Superior's offer was very tempting. While the students and teachers trying to get into the graveyard were not even close to being on the same power level as the Magical Superior, collectively she did not think that she and Gujak could stop them. There were too many of them, especially if they had the Magical Superior on their side.
On the other hand, Durima knew that she and Gujak were in big trouble already. Master probably already knew about their capture and how they had just spilled the beans to the Magical Superior. If they told the Magical Superior everything else, it wouldn't matter if he freed them or not, because either way, today was not going to end well for Durima and Gujak.
Master will punish us no matter what, Durima thought. But maybe he will punish us less if we abort the mission now.
The only question was, how to escape? If they tried to run, the students and teachers would get them. Yet neither Durima nor Gujak were very good teleporters, which left them with only one option, an option she wasn't sure would work but she would have to try anyway.
“I am not kidding when I said that the offer still stands,” said the Magical Superior. “I truly, honestly will protect you if you agree to tell me everything you know.”
“That may be true,” said Durima as she took a step back. “But Master has a strict policy about how to deal with traitors and I, for one, do not want to trespass it.”
As fast as she could, Durima grabbed Gujak's arm, wrapping her claws around it as tightly as she could, and jerked backwards. The whole world seemed to melt and morph around her and Gujak as they left the mortal plane and entered the ethereal. As they did so, Durima heard the Magical Superior shouting at them to come back, but she felt comfortable ignoring his calls.
For a brief moment, Durima's world went black. Then she and Gujak landed on a bright, sparkling white road that stretched on in both directions for as far as the eye could see. Durima landed on her back, allowing her to see the stars that shone in the black sky above them. With a gasp, Durima floated up and looked at the portal she and Gujak had just fallen out of. Through the portal, she could see the shocked expression of the Magical Superior, but only for a brief moment, because in the next minute, the portal closed with a small pop and she could see him no more.
Panting from the effort, Durima looked down at her body. As always in the ethereal, Durima looked more like a ghost than a living being. Her upper body was as large and bearlike as ever, but her legs had disappeared, replaced with only a wispy, ghostlike tail that was strange to look at.
She looked at Gujak. Like her, his legs had disappeared, replaced by a wispy tail that was slightly greenish, in contrast to her reddish ghost tail. He looked at her with wide, frightened eyes, as if he did not understand what was going on.
“We made it out alive,” said Durima, even though she knew that was a useless thing to say. “Though we can't enter the school via the ethereal, I guess we can exit using the ethereal, at least.”
Gujak floated upright, frowning like Durima had just killed his favorite pet. “You know Master is going to punish us for this, right?”
Durima nodded. “Yes. I am more than aware of what Master does to servants who abort their missions. I just thought that we might at least be able to tell him that we didn't tell those mages everything. Maybe he will not punish us as severely as he would otherwise.”
“Even if he does give us a lighter punishment, it'll still be painful,” said Gujak. “I mean, we had to abort the entire mission. It was a complete fiasco. There's no way Master will be happy about it.”
Durima shrugged. “What other choice do we have, but to return to Master and report our loss? Better to do it now rather than later.”
“Yeah, I guess you're right,” said Gujak. “But aren't you the least bit afraid of Master? I can't even begin to imagine how angry he is going to be with us once he finds out we failed. Horribly.”
Durima briefly flashbacked to an old memory, of the first time that Master had punished her for failing to complete a mission. She shoved the memory out of her mind, however, before she could dwell on it for too long because she did not want to relive that particular memory.
“I know exactly how angry Master will be,” said Durima. “I've served him for twenty-four years now. I would be a fool not to know.”
Gujak floated back and forth uncertainly. “Then what do we do?”
Durima looked down the shining white road they floated upon. She could not see the end of it—it was too long, and besides, it didn't even have an end, considering it was actually one giant circle—but she knew that somewhere down that way was Master's island, where he was no doubt patiently awaiting their return.
“We go back to Master's island,” said Durima. “We tell him everything that has happened, including our own failure, and prepare ourselves for whatever punishment he will dish out on us. It's the only thing we can do.”
***