Dungeon Crackers, Chapter 8: Attack at Bitane's School
I suppose I could put a "Previously, on Dungeon Crackers" here, but you could just simply read any chapters that you missed. Here's some links here.
Chapter 1: Entering the Dungeon
Chapter 2: Facing the Minotaur
Chapter 3: To slay a dragon, unconventionally
Chapter 4: Assembly of the Elders
Chapter 5: Meeting with the Client
Chapter 8: Attack at Bitane's School
Chapter 9: Just Who is Madelyn?
Chapter 10: Phoebe Reveals Her True Face
Chapter 11: The Stolen Talisman
Chapter 13: Showdown with Grayon
It was night by the time we arrived at the school, and I explained to the crew and Madelyn what the plan was.
The first part of the plan is sending Grayon through the door to burst open the front gates. The guards ran, and the roar of the Troll woke up many students. Grayon even made it more dramatic by tossing the front gates through a very large window. Soon, candlelight was flickering in the windows, and I knew that many of the students had the doors open to their rooms.
I then had Rolf go through the school and fly throughout the halls. He seemed to like that job.
Fear and gossip did the rest, and I ran into the main courtyard. I ran to the administration offices and was not surprised that they had not changed at all since I was last there, nine years ago. I turned to ask Madelyn to open the door, only she was not there.
“Madelyn, where are you?” I whispered aloud, but there was no sign of her.
I saw a lot of students running about the campus, and was wondering how long I could stay here before I was noticed. Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait too long, as she came running in.
“Where were you?”
“Sorry, I ran into many of my students along the way. They didn’t want me to leave their sides.”
“Thank you for disobeying them.”
In a few moments, she had the door open, and we entered into the offices. The last time I had seen them was when I had been expelled. I had expected the interior to be as unchanged as the exterior, but I was quite wrong. As Madelyn led me up a flight of stairs, I saw in the midst of this room of carved and sculpted wood was a metallic room that was quite out of place.
“What is this?”
“I’m told it holds some old records, but that is a lie. This is the one door that I don’t have a key to.”
“There’s ways around that.”
I looked it over, and remembered that I still had the pack of gunpowder that I did not use on the dragon. I was prepared to take it out, but I saw someone come from the right and go to the door. Even though I could not see his face, I could tell it was headmaster Bitane.
I grabbed Madelyn’s hand and ducked around the corner.
“What are you doing?”
“Shh,” I whispered, “we can just let the headmaster open the door. We can take the talisman from there.”
“Okay.”
When I heard the sound of the door opening, I ran to it. The room did have several crates full of scrolls, but most of the items looked like anything but school records. I saw Headmaster Bitane, and he was holding the Porovo Talisman.
“Put the talisman down, Headmaster.”
He seem startled and almost dropped the thing. It would have been a lot easier if he had. It probably wouldn’t have broken, and I would have grabbed it.
“Madelyn? What are you doing here? Oh, who cares. Just stay here. There is an army of magical creatures in the school.”
I was pleased that my two friends had somehow be granted “armada” status.
Bitane tried to leave, but I deliberately blocked the exit from the vault.
“I don’t know who you are, but you should come with me.”
“No. Give me the talisman, headmaster.”
Bitane stepped back, and clutched the talisman tight. He turned to Madelyn. “Who is this man?”
I never thought I would get a chance to say this to Bitane, but I always wanted to. “I’m someone that you cast out of here like trash. However, you didn’t realize the value of what you threw away.”
“Who are you?”
He really didn’t remember me. That made me furious. I decided that he would be quite easy to overpower, and I went and grabbed the talisman out of his hands.
The strangest thing happened. I was wearing Grayon’s magical gauntlet, the one that let me swim through rock, and it began to glow. It usually didn’t do that unless it was working. The glow then faded, and I felt a surge of power emanate from it.
I thought that Bitane was using the talisman to attack my hand, or something, so I drew it back. I inspected my hand, and saw that I had an ordinary gauntlet. Touching the talisman had somehow sucked the magic from my magic item.
“So, you thought you could use magic? I’ve got just the thing for that.”
I then saw a look in Bitane’s face that was familiar to me. It was the same look that would appear when he was casting a spell, back when the school trained wizards, not architects. I then felt the same surge of power happen again, but in several places on me. I saw that my fairy whistle was glowing, and its magic was being stolen way, into the confines of that talisman. I had no doubt that my blue tooth, hydro stone, and any other items I had would be completely ordinary by the time he was through.
Bitane grinned in satisfaction. “You were coming after this. Well, you’re powerless now.”
I then punched Bitane in the face as hard as I could. He may have sucked the magic from Grayon’s gauntlet, but it was still a gauntlet. Bitane then fell backwards, and knocked himself out in the corner.
I picked up the Porovo Talisman as he dropped it and held it in my hands. I have felt other magic items before, and felt the power that could not be described, but nothing was like this. I then realized that this thing was, in fact, the source of all magic. It had just sucked away the power from my magic items, but in a whim, I could easily turn them back. In fact, I could make any item magical if I wanted to. This wasn’t worth one million to get. Its value was in the billions.
I knew that we had to make it out of here, and that I would need to experiment to see what I could do with this thing.
Before I could ponder what to do first, I was struck on the head.
Who struck Tiran on the head? What the heck is going on? Find out in the next chapter here.
