The stairway stopped twisting with a thud. The force that had been pressing them down into the steps lessened enough to let them climb to their feet. They were at the entrance to the stairwell. What in the world was going on? Satch grabbed Jace by the wrist and yanked him into the office with shattered glass strewn over the floor. They both looked back at the stairwell a moment but didn’t bother asking each other what they just experienced. No way they were going to have answers for that. “We’ve gotta get out of here,” Satch said, trembling, but that made sense this time. Jace nodded absently. He couldn’t get his mind out of that room beneath. The sight of hanging bodies. The spike that the man named Cornelius caught. He hadn’t even seen it coming. Was that meant to kill him? There was no time questions. They needed to get moving. It was time to escape. His eyes landed on a third door in the room, on the left of the one still blocked by a chair. They ran for it. But the blocked door frame burst open, sending the chair hurling into Jace, knocking him into a tumble over shards of broken glass. His arms and back stung with countless cuts as warm sensation of blood ran over him. Some glass got his forehead too, evident by blood dripping into his eye like thick sweat. The tall, brutish old man emerged from where they had knocked him down the stairs. He was tattered, thick mustache wild and dusty over his scowl. He forced his way into the room while whips of black wrapped around his waist trying to pull him back. Satch pulled Jace up by the arm. “There you are, you little brats!” the man said through grinding teeth. “Did you leave this pathetic trap?” The man reached behind himself, grabbed hold of the black whips attempting to hold him, and flung the worm monster through a desk with the ease of a fisherman casting a line. Wriggling black worms burst over the floor. But before Jace and Satch could feel any dread at the familiar sight, the man took in a deep breath, the ring of light behind his head brightening. “Combustion current!” he shouted and a line of electricity worked its way from the whip around his waist through every worm constructing the creature. Then, in the blink of an eye, each and every little worm exploded in white-blue flames. The flames went out as fast as they arrived, leaving nothing but scorch marks. Even the man's uniform was left seared open around his midsection, although his skin underneath was unaffected. “Run!” Jace yelled. The two boys darted for the exit, entering a long hallway as a sizzle and explosion missed them by a hair. The two ran between rows of crystalline statues that turned to look after them as they passed. “General? Yes, I’m pursuing them now.” The man said as though to himself, thundering behind them. Another sizzle shot past Jace’s head to pop a statue into shards of jade. “Yes. Consider them dead, sir.” Satch yanked a statue over in a spin move that hardly slowed him down a second. Before it hit the ground, the statue caught itself on massive ape-like arms and flung itself upright. And punched the big man right in the face. Surprised by the sound, Jace turned around to see statues of domineering forms converging on the man, who was off balance from the first blow. Jace quickly reset his focus forward, trusting that the statues were stalling him well enough. What other choice did he have? Within seconds the hall opened to a foyer beneath with a gaping doorway letting in sunlight. They were almost out. And then the General charged into the foyer. Marble cracked under his steps, sending chips of it into orbit around him like a belt around a planet. Before the General caught sight of them, Satch opened a door lining the hall and pulled Jace in after him. The door shut behind them and suddenly all was quiet... and very dark. They were in pitch black, the only slight light being the sliver of it peeking in from under the door. They were sure the General hadn’t seen them, but they couldn’t be sure about the other guy. Jace wanted to catch his breath, but they needed to keep moving. Although the darkness made that difficult. What didn’t make any sense was how the rings of light behind their heads also vanished in the dark. Weren’t they sources of light? Jace took a step forward, hands out in front of himself to search for anything solid. His foot splashed in something like a shallow puddle. “What was that?” whispered Satch. “I don’t know.” An icon dropped into sight like a fairy lowering it down in front of his face on a fishing line. Jace could see it clearly even though he couldn’t see anything else. It was a simple circle with a light bulb in the center. Without even waiting to consider what this thing could be, Jace swung a finger through it. Sure enough, he couldn’t touch it, at least not physically. So, he reached out mentally, imagining his phantom finger pressing the button. With a click that he could feel, the room burst into light. Jace and Satch both covered their eyes from the surprising brightness. Then, squinting under his arm, Jace saw that his feet were definitely in water, and beneath that water were beady eyes looking right at him. Jace jumped, but not onto anything solid, he was in a giant pool. But instead of sinking into it, he splashed over it, stumbling to his knees. Jace stared down into deep water beyond his hands and knees. It felt as if there were something solid only inches below the water, but as he looked into it, it seemed like the depth of the sea underneath. Blood dripped down from his arms to spread through the water in clouds of red. “Let’s get going, yeah,” Satch said, speed walking through shallow water. As Jace got to his feet, he looked back to see a mass of brown and white under the water so large that it could swallow them both and likely be hungry for seconds. It was also creeping towards him. Logic may have stated that there was some kind of divider between Jace and the depths beneath, but logic didn’t seem to be applying as reliably as his fragmented memory recalled. So, the beady eyes on the sea creature's saucer-like head only met Jace’s for a moment before he was splashing after Satch. At the other end of the room was a wooden door with a golden knob that looked to be standing up straight on an ocean shore, vast sands stretching beyond it. He could hardly call the space a room. As he ran, he looked side to side to find that he was running across an endless sea. Curiosity got the best of him and he chanced another look back to find that the door they came through was set upright over the water like an immovable buoy. It looked as if walking through the door would only lead into the water on the other side. But that thought ended as the door swung open, revealing the hallway they had just come from and the mustached man they’d hoped to leave behind. He was covered in splinters of crystal and tears all over his uniform. He was breathing deep heavy breaths. The man pointed right at Jace with a snap of his fingers, ushering a thin arc of electricity in his direction. But a massive monster burst up from the water, spraying the room in rainfall as it absorbed the man’s attack with the effectiveness of a booger flicked at a boulder. The monster had the body of a whale that was brown with stripes of white, but its head was like a shark's set in the center of a saucer for a neck. All that mattered to Jace right at that moment was that this saucer shark was now between him and the threat. Satch got to the door on the shoreline, jiggling the doorknob frantically for only a second before kicking it open. Jace was right after him as they stepped through it, shutting the door after them. They searched for a lock but realized that the door didn’t stay shut anyway thanks to Satch destroying it. The two checked around the new space, both of them dripping wet, darkening the red carpet under their feet. If the angry mustache man was that close after them then they had to assume that the General was close after that. Jace had no idea how to gauge the strength of these guys, but based on what little he had already seen, including the mustache man obliterating the worm creature that nearly killed him earlier, they were far stronger than him and Satch. And they were clearly trying to kill them. Hopefully, the water monster would hold them back but he had a sickening suspicion that it wouldn’t last too long if the General caught up. Stretched out to both sides was another hallway lined with identical doors. The plus side of this was that the apparent maze could help them lose their pursuers. The problem though was that they could just as easily get lost. Jace and Satch both opened the first doors on the right and left. The one Jace opened led to a room lined with shelves that reached the ceiling. All were lined with varying shapes and sizes of trinkets spanning countless colors. Satch fell back from his doorway as what sounded like the shrieks of a million angry parrots burst from the room. He scrambled up and slammed the door shut with his back against it, his wide eyes finding Jace. “How’s your room? Let’s go through your room,” he said, quickly squeezing past Jace into the room full of tall shelves. Jace wanted to protest, considering the first door to the right of the ocean room would probably be one of the first places their pursuers would check, but he didn’t. As he glanced down at the wet tracks they were leaving in the carpet, he figured there was little chance of them hiding their trail anyway. Better to just move on quickly. At least this room had plenty of places to hide and nothing that may try to kill them. At least he hoped. *** Dillo lay panting in a pool of his own blood. As Julius bounded out of the kitchen, the children’s bodies had fallen on the table and floor where they lay still. He rolled himself over to face away from them. He didn’t have time to grieve and it wasn’t time for him to join them in the afterlife just yet. A section of table cloth tore free and slithered over the floor to reach Dillo’s waiting hand. He used it to wrap his wound, wincing as he pressed the cloth into the hole in his gut. He wasn’t sure what exactly was damaged, but he knew that his lungs and heart were fine, so that was enough to give him a little time. As long as he could stop the bleeding and get some of the mana from his reserve stores. But before that… Dillo manifested a few screens in his vision to display some of the rooms the boys were sure to have traveled through. He held his breath as they appeared, hoping that they would be alright. He almost prayed. The first screen showed his office, which was an absolute mess. His main desk was in pieces and covered in scorch marks, chairs were strewn about like pillows after a pillow fight, and glass shards and splintered wood covered the floor like sprinkles. There was definitely a confrontation there, but no bodies. The next screen showed the hallway. He tried his best to ignore the sinking feeling of his heart at the sight of his beautiful animated statues in pieces over the floor. There were real lives at stake, he reminded himself. Although, in truth, he always considered his creations like children of his own. But he pressed onwards, noticing a certain doorway burst apart in a similar fashion to what Julius did to his front door. The screen shifted like billions of little colored tiles turning over to create a new image of an ocean tank. Beside himself, he smashed a fist against the ground, wincing at the jolt of pain from his gut. In the Ocean Simulation Chamber, his Helioshark, Henry, floated belly up, full of holes and burns. He hoped that Henry at least died protecting the children… He always was a softy for little ones. When his next screen showed the hallway after his ocean simulation chamber, he saw both Julius and Caps with their hands gripping handles to the two doors adjacent to the one left blown to pieces on the floor. One of those led to his exotic bird figment chamber and the other to one of his storerooms. If the boys went into either of those two options, he hoped it was the bird chamber, at least there they would have a chance to hide and receive cover from the wild figments there. He manifested a screen to view the room just as Major Caps entered. It was a jungle of twisting trees full of branches to perch on, and twigs and berries to gather. The noise of the room would mask any movements of the boys, securing either their hiding place or escape, provided that Julius didn’t join Caps and level the space entirely. He guided the screen's view of the chamber as if a drone were flying around at dizzying speeds to show a live stream of the area. He checked in holes burrowed into thick trunks, collections of thick bushes, various tree houses made by the bigger figments with sticks and mud, but he found nothing. His hope built and died as he looked back at the hallway full of his shattered creations. The boys hadn’t made it out of the bird chamber and they weren’t on their way to the exit. It was then that he realized that the boys weren’t that far ahead of their pursuers. There was no way that they would have had time to get to the other end of the bird chamber before Caps entered. And if they weren't hiding there, then that means they didn’t enter that room at all. In a spray of fire, Caps began laying waste to the grand trees, swatting at the dive-bombing bird Figments protecting their home. But Dillo dismissed the screen before seeing anymore and his heart pounded as he pulled up a replacement to display his left-wing storeroom. It displayed the space from a bird's eye view to show an expansive grid of shelves. Sure enough, he saw two specks running in a random pattern through aisles and rows. And at the entrance, not nearly far enough away, was a speck of burgundy and gold. In a weak attempt to look on the bright side of the situation, at least that room had the mana Dillo needed.