43 loop 1 Part 23

I got back into my chair slowly, one hand braced on the seat, my recently reinstalled elbow held against my ribs like it might fall off again. It wasn’t necessary, but my brain hadn’t quite caught up.

Flag was still sitting on Bain, meditating. He had planted himself across Bain’s hips and lower back. Not enough to crush him, unfortunately, but more than enough to keep him from reaching anything useful. Bain was face down beneath Flag, swearing into the floor with the injured dignity of a man discovering consequences for the first time.

When he finally became understandable, it was not an improvement.

“This is mutiny,” Bain said into the stone.

Thankfully, nobody answered him. That was the trouble with attempting to murder a student in front of forty witnesses. It made the follow-up complaints difficult to take seriously.

Forty-odd faces watched us from the storage room. A mix of relief, anxiety, and anger. Near the back, a lanky fourth-year I recognized gave me a small wave. I nodded at Malus and moved on, because there were more pressing problems to deal with.

Finn hadn’t left my side. “You’re not getting away that easily. You need to tell me where you’ve been. I was worried sick. And then your uncle vanished, too? What the fuck, man? I thought we were friends.”

“Look, I’ll tell you, but we need to—”

“No, you’re going to tell me.”

“Extraordinary.” A new voice broke into the general roar spilling out of the storage room and into the ruined dining hall.

Professor Marcus Thane came through the crowd at the half-jog he used instead of walking. His manic energy hadn’t dimmed for the apocalypse. If anything, it had found a worthier subject. He crossed the room with no regard for the debris in his path, boots clipping fast against the stone, and stopped three feet from my chair.

“Oh, wow, golems!” He said this like he was seeing the sun for the first time. “Four of them? You have four golems. And that one’s moving independently. Oh, what? Good, good, good work, Mr. Yarrow. How are you anchoring your persuasions? How did you convince four tons of stone to walk? Out with it, boy. What did you do?”

“Oh, it wasn’t much. I didn’t really argue with them.”

Finn gave a frustrated clearing of his throat, but I gladly ignored him. I didn’t get why he was so mad. Yeah, I vanished, but… come on. Should anyone have been happy this evening?

“You must have said something. You cannot simply tell a stone to defy its nature. You have to make it agree to—”

He cut himself off, looking at Flag.

“Professor Thane,” Flag said. “Oh, hello. I would recognize those shoes anywhere. Look, I have knees now.”

Thane’s eyes snapped from Flag’s face to his chest. Then he traveled further down, as if he was looking for the knees to bend. Then realization dawned on his face. He put a hand over his mouth before he squealed in joy.

“You bound a soul into a constructed golem. Marvelous,” he said through his fingers. “How did you—what did you—that’s not a thing that’s been attempted in decades. Does he have proprioception? Does he dream? Does he have his own—”

“Professor Thane.” Finn’s voice had gone flat, and it was clear he was having trouble controlling himself. “Now isn’t the time for this.”

“It absolutely is the—”

“Laz has been missing for two days. His uncle, too. And now there’s a dragon that’s fucking killed everybody.”

Thane blinked, as if the apocalypse had rudely interrupted a much more interesting turn of events.

“Now, calm down. Your excitement can wait,” Finn continued.

I had never seen Finn talk to a professor that way.

Thane looked at me, confusion plain on his face. “He’s been missing for two days? Where have you been?”

Ignoring the professor, Finn rounded back on me, and the frustration had boiled over. “Laz, tell me everything. Now.”

“I was in the library.”

“Laz!”

“Fine, okay.” I sat up straighter in my chair and started talking as fast as I could. “I followed that gray man down into the restricted library. Got lost on the way back up when I couldn’t find the staircase. Got chased by a bunch of Frollarts, met a talking book, got chased by more Frollarts, got sent on a quest, found a book that let me summon cheese, cheesed a giant Frollart to save my uncle, learned to make golems, turned a stone with a soul into a golem, thought it was Wednesday, found out it was Thursday, and now we have to kill the dragon before it wakes up and murders everybody else. I don’t think I missed anything.”

Finn and the forty others just stared at me.

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“That was a joke,” I said.

No one believed me. Mostly.

Finn’s face went very still. “Your uncle is in a coma?”

Of every sentence in that summary, he had of course reached for the one with a wounded person in it. I thought it was best not to tell Finn about the time travel—not with a room full of my professors and Bain listening.

“That’s an unfairly selective response to a very dense report of almost-true statements.

“Laz, please just tell me what happened.”

I sighed and pointed my wand at my hand. “[Ex Nihilo Caseum].”

A warm wheel of cheese dropped into my hand with a soft thump.

“Look, I wasn’t lying about this. I really can summon edible food now.” I tried to give Finn a look that said I would talk to him later, and he finally relented.

I leaned over my chair and handed the cheese wheel to Professor Thane, who studied the spell with his usual enthusiasm.

“Can your golems fight?” The voice came from a woman making her way from the back of the gathered crowd.

It took me until she was practically right in front of me to realize who it was. Professor Frost, head of the Dungeon Track Department. The one who had judged my tournament matches.