Myth Alliances

The inevitable happened. The effects of processed carbohydrates hitting dragon digestive juices manifested itself strongly in the enclosed room. The air didn't actually turn green, but it smelled as though it should have. Gleep stood in the middle of the stone floor, looking very pleased with himself. Then he stuck out his long, forked tongue and blew a raspberry at the four Pervects. Flicking his tail playfully, he galloped out of the room. The Pervects let out a cry of fury, and went running out after him, past us and into the hallway. I checked the status of the spell to make sure the little flames were pointing inward now, hoisted my buckets and charged in.

"Hurry," Tananda urged me. "Phew!"

The gaggingly awful smell Gleep had left behind drove me to my knees, but I used a form of the "pushing" spell I knew to clear out the air.

"Look!" I cried joyfully, pointing to a clear glass globe on the table. "There he is!" A small figure was jumping up and down inside it. Wensley.

There was no time to free him now. I stuffed the sphere into my pouch. Tananda and I emptied our buckets into the center of the room and used brooms to push it over the surface of the floor in a big square.

"Do we have to get it everywhere?" she asked.

"Keep it more than an arm's length from the wall. I don't want it to take out the fire spell. I need that. Look! It's soaking right in." The disenchanting sand seemed to dissolve right into the substance of the floor.

"If it replicates itself," Tananda pointed out, "then eventually it will work its way outward and put out the fire."

"I hope we can get this done before that happens," I replied. But I was worried about that, too. Screaming and the sounds of breaking crockery allowed us to monitor Gleep's progress around the castle. I had instructed him to cause the maximum possible disruption, and it sounded as though he was taking my orders to heart. I hoped that the other Pervects would come running to help. When I was only half-finished covering the floor the sound seemed to grow nearer.

"Not yet, Gleep," I muttered desperately. We couldn't even become invisible. All magik within arm's length of the bespelled floor had been dampened. "We're not ready!"

It must have been a lucky gust of wind or a shift in the old building's foundation, but the door into the hallway swung shut just before Gleep thundered past it with the Pervects in hot pursuit. It was about time something went our way on this assignment.

I surveyed our handiwork. The anti-magik dust had soaked into the floor, leaving only a slight sheen to show where it lay. I tried throwing a fireball into the room, but my spell fizzled almost as soon as it left my hand. I grinned.

"Now, to get them all back in here," I declared.

"First thing we have to do," Tananda insisted, dropping her broom and shouldering a bag full of her own special equipment, "is to get their attention."

Loud clattering in the direction of the kitchen told us where Gleep had led them. I levitated the two of us past all the traps and spells that were supposed to prevent intruders and were now impeding the Pervects from intercepting the dragon who had made their room temporarily uninhabitable. Cursing, they had to dispell their own magikal obstacle course as they ran. Gleep let half the attacks roll off his tough hide, and blew out the other half of the defenses with blasts of flame.

He spotted me as we ducked into the long hallway that led to the butler's pantry, the laundry room and several other side passages. Wheeling almost on his tail, he bowled over his pursuers, and came charging towards us. I readied an illusion spell for the moment he crossed the threshold, transforming him into a mouse. The Pervects hammered past the doorway of the pantry, backpedaled and glanced in.

"Gleep?" squeaked the mouse.

"He must have gone down one of the other passages!" the elegant one shouted.

"We'll split up," the miniskirted one ordered.

"Call for reinforcements," the little one panted.

"I'll get the others back here," the elder one insisted. "You keep looking. I'll bet this Skeeve is here somewhere."

I grinned. They were absolutely right.

They all took off in different directions, but within minutes reassembled in the hall heading for the main stairs. Tananda vanished, heading to a point over the stairway where she had some little surprises ready. I could almost count backwards in my head, men ...

"Eeeeeee!!!"