Fictional fish. This was all so very, very odd.

Finally, Bethany took a deep breath and stood back up, grabbed her two weapons, then went back out to see how Kiel was doing.

As she emerged outside, something enormous with laces slammed into the ground just in front of her. She looked up, then up, and up some more, to where a giant easily as tall as the tower held Kiel and his dragon tightly in a fist, keeping either from moving.

"Oh, hi!" Kiel shouted down. "I hope you found something good in there, because things took a slight turn out here. Nothing I can't handle, of course, but I'll let you help if it makes you feel better!"

CHAPTER 28.

You were going to sacrifice yourself for me," Owen told Charm as they walked toward a deep, black, ominous-looking cave on the side of the tallest mountain in all of Magisteria. "Back in the Original Computer. You tried to-"

"I wouldn't have, if I'd known you'd bring it up again," Charm told him. "Can we stop wasting time?"

"You like me, don't you," Owen said, inwardly grinning. Sure, it was Kiel she actually had tried to save, but still.

She glared at him. "Every minute we waste, more Magisterians suffer. Keep that in mind the longer you spout on about nonsense."

"Okay," Owen said, stopping in front of the cave. "But next time we almost die, warn me before you try to jump in front of any ray guns for me. I'll just duck instead."

Charm narrowed her eyes, both human and robotic. "Trust me, it won't happen again." She turned toward the cave and shook her head. "Why don't your people ever just live in nicely lit places? It's always towers or castles or dank, dark caves."

"You're asking the wrong person," Owen said, peering into the nothingness.

"According to the Original Computer, this is it, the last known location of the First Magician," Charm said, checking a wrist computer to be sure. "So all we need to do is find him and ask where the Seventh Key is. How hard can it be?"

A chill ran through Owen as he remembered Charm saying those exact words in the previous books. "Could you not do that anymore?"

"Do what?"

"Ask 'How hard can it be?' Have you not noticed a pattern, whenever you say that?"

"No."

"What'd you say before the dragon's lair?" Owen said, counting off on his fingers. "Or right before the trip to that alternate, evil dimension? Or in the future? Or the nothingness at the end of the universe? Or with the ice giants, the ruins of that school for magic-"

"I'm a positive person!" Charm shouted at him, her robot eye shooting him a death look.

"No, you're not," Owen said, unable to keep from smiling at her. She was just so cute sometimes, what with her tough robot half and her tough nonrobot other half.

She snorted. "Who cares! Why is it so wrong to say, anyway?"

"Because you're asking for bad things," Owen told her, still grinning. "That's how this works. You say 'could be worse,' and things suddenly are. It's called irony, and authors-I mean, the universe loves it."

Charm snorted. "You magicians. You act like there's someone out there watching us." She waved her hand up at the sky. "No one can see us, Kiel. And no one's going to use what I say against us just because it'd be some kind of ironic situation. Try thinking logically for once."

Owen shrugged. "Fine. You go first, then, Ms. Positive Att.i.tude. Just wait and see what eats you."

She held up her twin ray guns. "Bring it on." She turned to the cave, then paused. "Though we could use a little light." She took out three miniature light b.a.l.l.s, then tossed them into the air. The b.a.l.l.s glowed with illumination and floated into the cave.

All three then immediately crashed to the ground and went out.

"Right," Owen said. "How hard can it be?"

She smacked him. "This is a magic cave. It's probably got some antiscience something or other. This is why you're along, for times when the laws of nature get thwarted."

"Thwarted?" Owen said, then brought up a spell in his head. This time, he was actually ready. Light of My Life had already been looked up, memorized, and was ready to go. The spell filled him with warmth, then pa.s.sed through him to light the immediate entryway of the cave. It wasn't much better than the light b.a.l.l.s had been, but at least they'd be able to see what they were tripping over.

"After you," Charm said, gesturing for him to go first. "It's your spell. If you die in front of me, I promise to shoot whatever killed you really hard."

"That's sweet," Owen said, but led the way in.

The original magician had picked an odd place to live, if he was still here. The walls, ceiling, and floor all looked . . . unnatural. It was as if the cave had been built to look like a cave, not just formed over the centuries. The stalact.i.tes were just too perfect, and too evenly s.p.a.ced out, while the path was just a bit too smooth.

"Something's wrong," Charm said. "If science really doesn't work in here, my arm and leg would have gone dead. There's more going on than we can see." She put a hand on the wall. "I think it's more localized than that. Some sort of strong electronic pulse could have disrupted the light's hovering ability near the entrance. But what would be the point of that? The only thing that'd need such a strong power source would be some sort of . . ." She paused. "Oh."

"Oh?"

"Nothing."

"What's nothing? Don't do that."

"Just thinking that some sort of energy bars coming down over the entrance to the cave might produce an effect that would have killed my lights. That's it."

"Energy bars."

"Yes. Energy bars."

"Like bars. Made of energy. Say, for a prison. To keep someone or something trapped inside."

"Or outside," Charm said with a shrug, still pushing her way through the cave.

Owen grabbed her arm, his heart racing. "So you're saying this is a trap?"

"Probably," Charm said. "It wouldn't be the first one. Who cares? If it is, we fight our way out. That's how this works."

Owen swallowed some choice words for her, then forced himself to continue, visions of the virus robots in the Original Computer floating through his mind.

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 n.o.body, 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?

n.o.body 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 n.o.body 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 gla.s.s.

"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 gla.s.s 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?"

CHAPTER 29.

Slight 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 ma.s.sive 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 ma.s.sive 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.