Will backed away, and his foot stepped on something, causing him to stumble. Looking down, he saw the object of his quest, Ethelgren’s Exhortation. Snatching up the rod, he stored it in the limnthal and started running. His coughing was getting pretty bad by then, and his heart was beginning to pound strangely in his chest—never a good sign.
Circling back, he found the exit and saw Alexa crawling across the floor, trying to reach her burning master. He summoned a third alchemist’s fire and tossed it at her for good measure, then he ran for the stairs.
The smoke was worse there, for it was billowing outward and climbing upward with him. He was staggering before he reached the top, and he fell to his knees when he reached the maintenance room. Crawling forward, he looked around and was grateful to see that the soldiers had woken the maintenance man, for the room was empty.
He started to climb back to his feet, but the air was much clearer close to the floor, so Will settled for a determined crawl. The rest of the soldiers seemed to have retreated from the building, for as he reached the hallway, he saw that there was no one in sight. The smoke above him was a thick cloud now. Only a foot or two of air just above the floor was still clear enough to breathe and his lungs were still spasming with the smoke he had inhaled in the basement.
Leaving the central stairs, Will headed toward the front entrance, but he wondered if he would make it before the smoke overcame him. I defeated an evil master wizard-vampire, only to die crawling out of a burning building. Typical.
His hope died when he came to the end of the hall. In the smoke and confusion, he had gone the wrong way. Now he would have to crawl back in the direction he had come. He wanted to scream in frustration, not that he had the air to do so. He started crawling back, but he knew he wouldn’t make it.
Then two massive feet appeared on the floor in front of him. A giant hand caught the back of his tunic and another gripped the waistband of his trousers. Tiny was there, and with Will hanging between his two hands like a toddler caught doing something terrible, the big man began to run, stomping through the hall.
Trying to hold his breath, Will saw that the big man had a towel wrapped around his head. That’s a good idea, he thought. I should have done that too. Might have made it easier, at least for a while.
A few seconds later, Tiny kicked open the main door, and Will was blinded by the sunshine. Fresh air flooded his lungs, kicking off a fresh round of coughing, which eventually resulted in Will losing control of his stomach. Still grateful, he vomited onto Tiny’s boots, then passed out.
Chapter 39
Someone was leaning over him. Having experienced similar situations in the past, Will decided he must be in bed somewhere. He remembered being rescued. With luck it might be Selene come to chide him for his foolishness. Blinking, he tried to focus on the face.
His eyes finally did their job, and he was disappointed to find it was Doctor Morris looking down at him. “Of all the luck,” he muttered.
“It seems the spell was effective,” said the doctor. “You’re breathing much better now.”
“There are spells for this?” asked Will suspiciously.
“For many things,” said the doctor. “They aren’t perfect, but with the right knowledge and the right magic, at the right time, we can do a lot, even without fancy things like regeneration potions.”
“But I could have taken a regeneration potion,” said Will stubbornly.
The doctor leered at him maliciously. “Yet you didn’t, and you passed out. If your enormous savior hadn’t broken the doors down getting you in here, you would almost certainly have died from smoke inhalation.”
Despite his mother’s training, Will didn’t really know much about injuries involving fire and smoke. “I was in the clear when I passed out,” he countered confidently.
“It’s about more than just getting fresh air. Smoke is poisonous, and your blood was already circulating the poisons through your body and brain,” explained Doctor Morris.
“So, I should have used a universal antidote potion,” said Will snippily. “I have a few of those too.”
“And yet you still didn’t take one before passing out.”
Will deflated, accepting defeat. “Fine, Doctor. I owe you one this time.”
Doctor Morris laughed, straightening up and stepping away. “See that it doesn’t happen again!”
“You shouldn’t tease someone who just saved your life,” said a female voice from the other side of the bed. It was Janice.
Will turned toward her, fearful of what he might see, so he went immediately for humor to defuse the blow. “Tiny, is that you?” he asked, hoping his tone sounded playful as his eyes locked on Janice’s face.
If he had seen her from a distance, from the wrong angle, he might have mistaken her for an old woman, for the hair on one side of her head was shockingly white, utterly devoid of color. It created a stark contrast with the brown hair that covered the other two thirds of her head, but it wasn’t ugly.
Her eyes were what sent a jolt through him. Her right eye, the one that had been spared, was still hazel, but the left eye, which had regrown, was now an icy blue. There were also fine silver lines that traced where the skin had been torn and mended, but for the most part her cheek and nose were smooth and unblemished.
In short, Tiny had told the truth. While Janice would never be mistaken for ordinary again, she was still lovely, and that beauty had been enhanced by the exotic strangeness of her dual colorations. “You look good,” he said suddenly, forgetting his joke.
Janice smiled, tears in her eyes. “You look like shit. There’s soot and smudge marks all over your face, not to mention your hair.”
“My hair?” He lifted a hand to explore his head. His scalp seemed to be fine, but it seemed that a large portion of the hair was gone on one side, burned down to within an inch of his scalp. He had no memory of being burned, but it wasn’t too surprising considering what he’d been through. At least now he had a haircut to match his missing eyebrows.
Tiny entered the room, catching the end of the conversation. He ran a hand through his own short military cut. “I think you’ll have to go short for a while, like your betters.”
Will chuckled. “Probably.”
“You shouldn’t have gone in there,” said Janice. “I warned you that the relic wasn’t usable anyway. You nearly got yourself killed for nothing.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” responded Will. “I found it on my way out.”
“How?” asked both of his friends simultaneously.
He spent the next few minutes explaining what had happened and describing the fight in the basement, though he did his best to downplay the sheer terror he had felt, and the hopelessness of fighting such a powerful wizard. It didn’t matter anymore anyway. Androv was dead. Now they just had to worry about the ordinary monsters.