There exist certain fundamentals to magic that hold true at all levels of spellcraft. Whether you are a novice producing a simple ball of light to read by or a master mage raising the stoney bones of your very own tower, all ‘Spells’, as we know them, need three things to work.

The first is ‘knowledge’. One must ‘know the spell’ in order to ‘cast the spell’.

This makes the whole business sound far simpler than it actually is. It creates the idea that it is sufficient to simply memorize a pattern of symbols, glyphs or words to a sufficient extent to be able to reproduce them at will in order to cast.

This, however, is incorrect. ‘Knowing’ a spell is far more complex than just memorization. The exact pattern required to achieve a certain effect for a spell could be influenced by a vast number of factors, such as the wind, weather, air pressure, the relative position of the target, the ambient light level, even the mental state of the caster, to name but a few, all interlocked in a unique, balanced, interdependent web for each specific application of magic.

There are even differences between individuals casting the same spell, which is why ‘teaching’ magic is so much more complex than developing the best diagrams and shoving them under an apprentice’s nose. Attempting to simply commit a collection of spell matrices to memory is an inefficient and difficult endeavor; it is far simpler to just truly understand the pattern in question, and thereby making any required changes to the spell simply become a logical extension of that understanding.

By necessity, there will be some memorization involved in the process of learning a spell, but only as a stopgap measure on the road to achieving true mastery with it.

The second requirement is ‘power’. All magic needs a form of power to energize it and provide the ‘push’ required to bend reality to your will. This is likely the best known of the three components, as it is the most tangible one and the one that can be most easily understood by those with no magical training.

It is, of course, essence.

Essence is both the studious wizard’s greatest boon and simultaneously his greatest weakness. With a sufficient supply of the right essence, a powerful mage can produce miracles. Without, he is nothing but an old man with a stick.

All of us have minute quantities of every conceivable essence coursing through our bodies, constantly replenished by our own biological processes, so no spellcaster is ever truly without magic. However, most are in such trace amounts that attempting to form a spell with them is a process of hours and days if not longer, far beyond anyone’s ability to focus.

A lucky few are born with the ability to naturally gather abnormally large reserves of certain types of essences, or the instinctual ability to convert more common varieties into more esoteric ones on demand. These are known as ‘generators’ or ‘converters’. Being naturally able to produce an otherwise difficult to obtain type of essence is an incredible boon; not only does it allow such an individual easier, more instinctual access to such essence, it allows them to freely practice without the normal costs involved in sourcing the essence required.

However, there is no gift, no inborn advantage that cannot by matched through the simple expedient of spending sufficient coin. It matters not whether the essence comes from inside the mage, drawing on his own internal reserves of power, or from the harvested essence of monsters and beasts, purchased from hunters who collect such things for a living. The final effects are identical.

In that sense, natural gifts do not make for a stronger mage. It merely makes for a cheaper one.

The final aspect of a successful spell is ‘will’. An entire bath full of essence and all of the knowledge in Aer mean nothing if there is no will to bring them together. It is the most difficult skill to learn, yet the most valuable.

Will is what forces essence into the spell pattern, and it is what holds the entire construct together when it wants to fly apart. It is what limits how much essence you can put in your spell at once, or how complex a spell you can cast. It influences how powerful an effect you can create with a given spell and how quickly you can draw essence into it. It is what leaves you mentally exhausted, even if you only made use of external essence supplies.

It is, to put it in simple terms, your desire to change the world.

- Dulzahan, Y. Chapter 1 of The Fundamentals of Magic, Grailmane Academy for the Study of the Forbidden Arts

“Gora! Gora, do something!” Rita frantically shook the big, demonic woman.

It had very little effect. Every muscle in her body was locked up in a state of paralysis. Rita could barely shift her.

“Samual! Break through it!” she tried, shaking him as well, but he was similarly frozen in place.

Bob, Ava, all of them. Frozen. Even their driver sat rigidly on his seat, making no move to prevent the young man ahead of them from carefully catching the bridles of their slowly plodding horses and quickly bringing them to a halt.

As he did, three more robed individuals stepped out of the dark grey carriage, one at a time. None of them had their hoods up, revealing two of them to be a young man and woman, in their early twenties.

But it was the last man to dismount drew Rita’s eye. He was older than the rest, with grey hair and short beard on a fleshy face that spoke of too many good dinners and too few laps around the block. His body was similarly flabby under his robes. Not exactly obese, just with a certain noticeable roundness to his shape.

“Why is the specimen still moving? Who screwed up the capture field?” he demanded angrily towards the others.

“Professor, I followed the instructions exactly, I… I don’t understand!” the woman stammered. “I don’t know how it could have missed her!”

“It might be because she isn’t bipedal, Professor,” the man interjected, casting a self-satisfied smirk towards the woman. “If Enelly didn’t correctly adjust the control matrix to compensate, the field probably thinks she’s a donkey.”

“Do you think I don’t know that, Derik?” she hissed back. “I did compensate to extend the effected targets!”

“Clearly not, since she’s still moving,” Derik replied, looking smug.

“Shut up, both of you!” the Professor snapped. “I do not care whose fault it is. All of you are simply going to have to round her up manually! Jared, take the lead.”

By this point, the driver of the carriage had also hopped down and lowered his hood, revealing the shaved head of someone older than the others. His skin also appeared to have a faint, bluish tinge.

Clearly, he was the most senior of the Professor’s students.

“Of course, Professor,” he replied in a solemn voice, before twirling his finger in a clear hand signal.

All three of them carefully spread out as they approached the wagon.

Rita hadn’t been idle this whole time. While they’d been talking, she’d scrambled off the wagon, in the process dumping a blinking, confused and sleepy looking Zaxier off her back and onto the road in her rush.

Her initial elation at discovering that he had not been frozen by the ‘capture field’ was quickly crushed when he took one look around and darted underneath the wagon, out of sight.

Useless bloody cat.

Rather than worry about him, she’d been struggling to extricate her spear. They had packed it lengthwise along one side of the wagon’s cargo box, it being just barely short enough to fit inside.

Unfortunately, it was the side that Gora was sitting on. The spear was trapped underneath her muscular, red backside, hemmed in by the wooden sides of the wagon’s cargo box. Rita had not been having much luck trying to pull it out.

As the three students slowly fanned out around her - the one on the far side staying by the horses - they mumbled something under their breath. A sudden shiver passed through Rita’s body, as if a whole herd of wild black friday shoppers had trampled across her grave.

At the same time, dozens yellow bands of yellow light manifested out of thin air, attempting to wrap themselves around her limbs. Where they got a grip, trying to move them felt like attempting to wade through treacle.

They were trying to bind her!

Abandoning her spear for a moment, she focused on struggling against the tightening bands. She clenched her teeth, trying to resist the unnatural shivers, while flailing her arms about in an effort to break free.

There was a slight churning sensation in her stomach and it felt as if she hit some sort of block… and then she was through. Abruptly, the shivers disappeared and the golden bands broke and scattered.

“Professor Proxton, the magic isn’t taking hold,” one of the students around her, all carefully keeping their distance, reported. “She keeps shrugging it off.”

“I can see that,” the Professor replied, idly stroking his beard. “How very interesting.”

Rita felt the urge to run. To just leave the others to their fate and flee, as far and as fast as she could. Instead, she braced four legs on the wagon before heaving upwards, managing to shift Gora by a few centimetres, enough so it cleared the back of the cargo box. She quickly yanked it out, scraping her knuckles painfully on the wooden sidepanel in the process.

“Stay back!” she screamed, sweeping her spear menacingly towards the students surrounding her.

When they all took a step back, she ran for it, ducking between two of the apprentices and surprising the bald-headed one by smashing the butt of her spear into his stomach on her way past.

Of course running was the right move. If it was really her that they were after, running forced them to choose between doing whatever they had planned for Gora and the others or catching their prize. And if they gave chase, she had a spear. It was the smart play.

It was also a play that lasted about two seconds.

Rita had barely moved past the doubled over student before she had to skid to a halt to avoid being impaled by a sudden array of long, stone spikes breaking through the ground ahead of her.

Then she was forced to duck to avoid a similar array sprouting up from behind her, and before she realized what was going on, she was neatly enclosed in a circular, teepee-shaped prison of stone bars.

“Luckily, there are alternative solutions,” the Professor said, closing a small vial of thick, brownish goo. In front of him, a complex pattern in glowing brown faded from sight. “Even if they are more expensive.”

Rita tried to tug her spear free. It had gotten trapped between the stone bars, but she quickly realized the futility of it and began pulling on the stone bars themselves. Somehow, they were a lot stronger than stone that thin had any right to be.

“What do you want with me?” she snarled at the Professor slowly ambling closer.

“My, my, you really as interesting as Ava said. Lucid, rational, and apparently, armed? What an interesting weapon you have there,” he mused, idly fingering a wooden disk hanging on a string around his neck.

Ava?

Rita’s peered between the stone bars of her new prison, barely able to make out Ava still sitting, huddled in her blankets in the cart, as unmoving as everyone else. She was as paralyzed as the others by whatever magic the carriage was emanating.

When had she spoken to him? What had she told him?

“What shall we do with the rest of them, Professor?” the older, bald student student asked. Jared or something.

“Kill them,” the professor replied easily.

“No!” Rita screamed.

“But no magic,” he went on, completely ignoring Rita. “Use a knife. Slit their throats or something. Make it look like bandits.”

The female student, Enelly, shrieked as a small, furry form darted across her feet from underneath the wagon before diving beneath the carriage.

“Fucking cat!” she exclaimed.

Zaxier. Was he trying to help or was he trying to escape?

“Make sure you kill the cat as well,” the Professor added. “I don’t want to risk someone extracting its memories.”

Enelly nodded and set off towards the carriage where Zaxier was hiding.

“No! Please! Don’t hurt them!” Rita begged as gleaming knives were drawn, but nobody paid her much heed.

“Sir, one of them is Ava,” the student named Derik said as he pulled Ava’s blanket off of her head.

“Oh?” The Professor peered closer. “Why, so it is! Well, now this is awkward.”

“Leave her alone!” Rita shouted again. She wasn’t sure what was going on yet, and until she did, she was going to give Ava the benefit of the doubt.

“I was most upset when you failed to let us know our prize had set off from the Outpost,” he spoke, ignoring Rita’s outburst entirely.

What?

“It was a good thing that with the Tree suddenly coming back to life, all of the Academy scrying devices were no longer fully booked and we found ourselves with some spare resources to maintain a scrying eye on them. It turns out, in the end, your assistance was unnecessary after all.”

Ava had betrayed her?

“Unfortunately, the Dean was quite insistent that we leave no evidence to connect the Academy with this little caper,” he said, shrugging helplessly. “The Delver’s Guild is our primary source of essence, after all, and it would be terrible business to alienate them by attacking one of their wagons, wouldn’t it?”

But… Ava was her friend…

“If you had contacted me for a second time like we’d agreed, I would have told you not to travel with the specimen. Alas, you did not. How unfortunate. I do so hate losing a promising student, but if we kill the others and let you live… well, it would make it rather obvious who was behind all this, wouldn’t it?”

“She could lie, tell the Guild that the wagon was attacked by bandits. It could strengthen the narrative that we’re trying to…” Derik tried, but the professor cut him off.

“Lying? When there are so many magical ways to extract the truth?” he asked, “No. Kill her too. No witnesses.”

There was a hissing sound as the female student tried to dig Zaxier out from underneath the carriage. She yelped and yanked her hand out, sucking on a scratched finger.

The guy, Derik, sighed, but then obediently climbed onto the wagon, his knife gleaming in his hand.

It finally sunk in for Rita. Ava had betrayed her. She’d organized this abduction and now it had backfired on her. And all Rita had to do to make her get her just deserts was… nothing.

Except she hadn’t let them know when they left. She’d changed her mind.

“No! Please, wait! Don’t hurt them and… and… I’ll come along willingly!” Rita shouted. “If you let them go, I’ll come peacefully! I’ll cooperate!”

For the first time, everyone paused and turned to her.

“Well, aren’t you just getting more and more interesting by the minute,” the Professor remarked, idly running his fingers through his white, wispy beard once again. “But I do not see how that helps our situation.”

Behind them all, Rita spotted Zaxier quietly slip past the female student, who was looking in her direction, and disappear into the open door of the carriage.

“If I come willingly, there’s no kidnapping!” Rita tried. “No kidnapping means no reason for the Guild to get upset, right?”

“Sadly, things are not that simple,” the professor said sadly, shaking his head. “The attack has already occurred. The damage is done. And your cooperation is optional.” He turned back. “Kill them.”

He’d barely said the words when a sudden shower of arterial blood sprayed across them all. Rita screamed as all the other students leapt backwards, trying to avoid the sudden crimson spray.

The fourth student, the one that had caught their horses, was standing on the front of the wagon, giggling like a loon, the knife in his hand smeared with red and his robe covered in blood.

At his feet lay their driver’s body, a wicked slash carved out of his throat pumping a rapidly diminishing fountain of red into the cold mountain air.

“What the fuck, Malv!” Jared, the bald one, exclaimed. “I’m trying to keep these clothes clean!”

“Do you have any idea how hard it is to get blood out, you fucking freak?” Derik snarled, gesturing at the red spots on his shoulder from where he’d caught the edge of it.

Rita was shocked. Josoph was just dead. The old man had demanded to complain to Duncan before he’d let a ‘fuckin’ monster’ on his cart, had insisting that she was going to kill them all.

He’d been right, in a way.

Then Rita wailed again as Derik grabbed Ava by her hair with one hand and pressed his knife against her throat with the other.

“Sorry, Ava,” he said apologetically. “But what was it you told me when I asked you out? ‘Go die in a puddle’? Kinda ironic, don’t you think?”

Something in the air shifted. Whatever it was made Rita’s spine tingle again, but when she looked, she realized the Professor and all of his students had frozen, exactly where they were.

With a deep, sickly, thrumming sound, a black blast of dark energy erupted from Ava, sending her assailant flying over the side of the wagon. When he crashed to the ground in a boneless heap, Rita could see that his entire face, arms and upper torso had been blackened by the dark, necrotic energy, his clothes seemingly rotted right into his flesh.

His hands and forearms looked shriveled and dessicated, having taken the brunt of Ava’s magic.

“Fuck you, Derik! Fuck you!” Ava screamed at him, leaning on the side of the wagon.

She pointed her finger at him, as he lay moaning softly in the road and kept going. “I told you I wasn’t going to be your latest fucking conquest! Do you think I didn’t know you’d slept with just about every other girl in our department? You absolutely disgusting, fucking, player pig!”

Rita was startled as Samual’s face suddenly appeared through her bars.

“Rita, you okay?” he asked.

“Yes, I’m okay. I think they were trying not to hurt me,” she replied. “What just happened?”

“That would have been me,” Zaxier called, sticking his head out the open door of the carriage. “These fine people were kind enough to leave the control array of their enchantment matrix unlocked and unguarded. That is the thing that is keeping everyone paralyzed. So I slipped inside and made a few minor modifications.”

“What did you do?” Samual demanded, warily eying the Professor who was still standing with his hands on his hips, as if watching Ava’s execution. His eyes were darting around in a panic.

“Relax, Samual, they will not be repositioning in any immediate timeframe,” Zaxier replied, sitting in the door and looking extremely pleased with himself. “The spell array embedded into their carriage was set to paralyze all nearby humanoids, but they used those little wooden rune-disks around their necks to flag themselves exempt. I merely flipped it around, so that the aura affected only those with the disk, instead of only those without.” A wide grin stretched the cat’s lips, revealing his tiny, sharp teeth. “It was child’s play.”

Rita looked around and sure enough, the professor and each of his students wore what looked like a wooden coin on a string around their neck. All except the one on the ground, who was writhing in pain. His coin appeared to have been destroyed by Ava’s blast of magic. Not that he seemed to be in much of a position to do anything about it.

“Hold on, I’ll get you out,” Samual said, turning back to Rita and ignoring the cat’s smug look. He gripped one of the stone bars of Rita’s cage in both hands and started to pull, to very little effect.

Behind him, two large, red legs in thick, leather boots landed on the ground. Rita looked up to see Gora staring at the eerily frozen Professor with murder in her eyes and her nasty looking blade hanging by her side, clenched tightly in one hand.

“Gora, wait!” she exclaimed, reaching out through the bars as if she was trying to pull her back.

“Sit tight, Rita. I’ll just be a moment,” Gora growled as she stepped forward, the sound a deep rumble that Rita could feel in her chest.

She was going to kill him. She was going to smash the professor to a pulp while he just stood there, unable to even raise a hand in his own defence. Rita wasn’t sure how she felt about this. On the one hand, he was going to do the exact same thing to them. On the other, killing in cold blood was wrong, no matter the circumstances.

If it was a matter of self defence, maybe. This world was dangerous, and sometimes you had to be decisive where your own safety was concerned. But there was simply no way to justify murdering someone when they offered no threat.

Not that Alice would have agreed. She would have argued that he had forfeited his life the moment he’d threatened their lives. That he would simply go after her again if they left him here. But Rita just couldn’t feel the same. He was still a human being, and it just wasn’t right.

If she killed helpless people who were unable to defend themselves, how was she any better than all of the other monsters that she’d seen in the Nightmare? She’d already killed the Inquisitor by accident when he’d been helpless, she didn’t need more deaths on her conscience.

“Gora, please don’t kill him!” Rita pleaded from between the bars.

To her surprise, Gora actually paused. “Why?” she asked in a low voice.

“Because he can’t even defend himself!”

“Best time to kill someone, in my experience,” Gora growled. “Less messy that way.”

There was a loud crack as Samual finally managed to snap one of the rock bars of Rita’s prison. The hole wasn’t big enough for her to get out by, however. That would take at least two more broken spears.

“Why? Look at them! They’re completely helpless! You can’t just kill them for no reason!” Rita argued.

“Watch me,” Gora growled stepping forward again, raising her sword.

“Gora, this is murder!” Rita exclaimed, hands clenched around the bars of her prison. “You’re better than this!”

Gora suddenly stopped, turning back to her. “What do you think is going to happen when that magic wears off, Rita?” she roared back. “They’re going to come right after you again! After all of us!”

Rita pursed her lips. Gora was right. Letting them go put potentially all of their lives in danger. Yet was killing them the only way?

“What if we just knock them out? And if that means you hit them a little hard and they end up needing medical attention, well, that’s the risk they took when they attacked us, right?” Rita tried.

Above, the sun broke through the clouds. A ray of sunlight shone down, illuminating Rita’s back in its gentle, warm radiance.

“Please, can we not resort to cold blooded murder as our first choice?” she begged.

Gora shook her head. “Sorry, Rita. I’m not taking the risk. I’m making the call…” Then she stopped, staring at something over Rita’s head. “What’s that?” she asked, before her eyes widened.

Rita glanced behind her. All she could see was the ray of sunlight shining through a break in the clouds.

Wait a second… on this world, the sun never shone at an angle!

And why was it turning… blue?

“Shit… everyone down!” Gora roared, diving behind the wagon, dragging Bob down with her. Everyone else sought whatever cover they could, just in time for the world around them to erupt in blue flame.

Blue flames burned all around them. It was all Rita could do to just dig her face into the ground and cover her ears to protect against the incredible roar and stifling heat. Every breath burned. It felt like she was in an incinerator.

And then as suddenly as it had appeared, the fire was gone, leaving the world feeling oddly quiet. The scent of ozone and ash reached her nostrils.

What had just happened?

She looked around her in a state of shock. It looked like a vision from hell.

The world looked blasted. Like someone had poured liquid fire in a massive area all around them. Here and there, pieces of rock were still smouldering, but for the most part, everything almost half way up the hills on either side had been burnt completely black. There wasn’t a single piece of greenery left in the blast zone.

The only exception was a small, roughly circular area around both of the horse-drawn transports that appeared to be completely untouched.

Immediately, the horses panicked. The ones pulling their own wagon set off down the road, heading out towards Grailmane at a full sprint. Bob made a grab for their reigns but just couldn’t get close enough, accomplishing nothing but falling on his face.

The two horses pulling the carriage broke free of their harnesses and galloped off into the blasted landscape.

Zaxier darted out the door of the carriage itself just as it emitted a faint crackle followed by a loud pop. Its frame appeared to have been burnt, but not by the fire. Instead, the glowing pattern that had covered it before appeared to have burnt hot enough to sear ugly, dark cracks into the wood in a jagged, blackened mockery of the clean, glowing lines it had sported before. It looked like whatever spell it had been carrying had completely overloaded.

The professor stirred.

“What… what have you done?” he demanded, taking a few stumbling steps away from where Gora was slowly getting to her feet. “Do you have any idea how expensive that artifact was? That was Academy property!”

“I saved our lives, you ingrate!” Zaxier hissed, nearly leaping into Bob’s arms. “If I had not altered the spell matrix to counteract the fire, we would all have burned!”

“And where did this fire come from exactly?” the professor demanded, magic starting to flicker and flow around him.

With a loud woomph, a figure with glowing wings landed behind them. He was dressed in fine, glowing armour, every inch of which was etched with sigil and runes.

It was the Inquisitor again. And somehow, Rita knew he was staring right at her.

“Heathen witch!” he thundered, his bellowing voice echoing off the hills surrounding them. “Your time for justice is at hand!”

Professor Proxton spun around and glared, Gora and the others temporarily forgotten. “Inquisitor! What is the meaning of this intrusion? This is sovereign Grailmane territory…!”

“Silence, heretic!” the Inquisitor spat, sweeping his blazing sword in front of him once again.

Another wash of blue fire roared towards them, only to collide with a massive icy blast of cold conjured by the Professor.

“I will not be silenced by the likes of you!” he scoffed. “You are the intruder here! Turn around and leave, or suffer the consequences.”

He carefully pulled his robe open, revealing rows upon rows of small, glowing vials, and sparking a momentary hunger in Rita’s belly.

Essence.

The Inquisitor ignored him. Trapped by her cage of stone, Rita could do nothing but watch in horror as the Inquisitor raised his sword and pointed it directly at her, fire already starting to swirl around.

Then an incredibly fast moving bolt of purplish magic struck him head on, sending him spinning through the air before he flared his wings, getting himself back under control several metres in the air.

The Inquisitor’s head twitched, turning ever so slightly to face the Professor. “If you insist on interfering, then I shall slay you first, dark magician,” he said in a low, menacing voice.

Rita winced as tongues of flame and magic clashed in the air above her. Two large, red hands closed on the stone bars of her prison, and with a heave, Gora snapped them like toothpicks.

As hands reached for her, Rita looked up into Samual’s face. For the first time that she could ever remember, he looked afraid.

They barely managed to scamper out of the line of fire, diving to the ground at the edge of the unburnt circle next to where Ava and Bob were already taking cover before an errant bolt of purplish magic shattered Rita’s cage entirely.

“This fight is beyond us, we need to run,” Samual said, wide eyed.

“You run, I will stay. If these two weaken each other enough, I will kill whoever survives, make sure they don’t come after us,” Gora rumbled.

“The Inquisitor will kill you both,” he replied gravely.

“Hey, don’t underestimate Professor Proxton! He’s a full tenured professor at the Forbidden A…” Ava began, before wilting under the array of hostile glares from all of the others.

“Shut up, traitor,” Gora hissed.

“We don’t know what happened! Give her a chance to tell her side of the story!” Rita tried to defend her as more bolts of magic flew overhead.

“I know exactly what happened,” Gora snarled. “The little bitch sold us out.”

“We don’t have time for this. We need to run!” Samual said, pointing towards the direction of Grailmane. The road travelled at an angle, to the city, trying to keep a shallow slope for the sake of the wagons that had to go this way. But the direct route was much shorter, if significantly steeper.

Without waiting for the others to respond, he grabbed Rita’s shoulder and dragged her along behind him. She stumbled for a few steps, but quickly she was skittering along behind him up the hill as flashes of light from the battle lit up the blackened ground ahead of them.

Halfway up the hill, Rita risked a glance over her shoulder. To her relief, Gora, Ava and Bob were not far behind, with Zaxier clinging frantically to the front of Bob’s shirt.

Then she saw the absolute carnage that was occurring behind them, where the Inquisitor and the Professor were fighting.

A large section of the ground was covered in tangled nests of the jagged stone spikes, where the Professor had tried to skewer his inquisitorial foe. The Inquisitor, on the other hand, was flying on his golden wings, sending out the occasional sweep of flames which was intercepted by momentary, flickering barriers, while doing his best to dodge glowing purple blasts of magic and not doing very well. He was regularly getting struck by the fast moving blasts, sending him careening out of control through the sky for a few moments before he could right himself. Neither looked like they were doing any real damage.

Two of the students, Malv and Enelly, were doing their best to put as much distance between themselves and the battle as they could, but Jared was attempting to help his Professor, also throwing blasts of elemental magic at the Inquisitor.

Even as she watched, a stray gout of flame from the Inquisitor’s sword set one of the small, fleeing figures alight, and she watched them run around screaming as their robes burned.

“Where are we going?” Rita shouted as they ran.

“We need to get to the top of that bluff!” Samual replied, pointing ahead of them.

Rita’s heart sank. The hill they were climbing ended in a short, sheer, rocky cliff. From down below, it hadn’t been quite clear just how big or steep it was, but this close she could now see that it was near vertical probably over two metres high!

It was a dead end!

Or was it? She was still thinking like old Rita, who got cramps from just walking past the gym. New Rita had eight legs and sharp little claws on her toes, perfect for climbing. She could jog up this cliff.

But the others might struggle to get up quickly. She glanced over her shoulder at Bob right behind her.

A powerful blast from the battle behind them made the ground shake under their feet. Rita was momentarily thankful for the spare legs she possessed as her two-legged companions stumbled across the rocky ground.

With the cliff looming over them, Rita turned and held her arms out. “Zaxier! Bob’s going to need his arms to climb. I’ll carry you up!”

To his credit, Zaxier hesitated for only a moment before he wriggled out of Bob’s grip and sprinted over, leaping straight into her arms.

“Climb, Boy! I’ll see you at the top!” he shouted back.

“Yes, Mister Zee!” Bob replied, trying to appear calm, but Rita could see the look of panic on his face as he gazed up at the nearly vertical cliff.

A bright, blinding flash behind them lit up the world around them before a deep rumble washed over the group.

Then, in the momentary lull of silence, a solitary scream of pain rang out.

Jared. They were running out of time.

Luckily, Rita had an idea.