Two guards are standing at her office’s door. The corridor is lit by the familiar magical lanterns and their armor shines in the blue light. Lictor must have found out where I went on this Ride and sent the guards here directly. I wonder if he knew I’d get killed by the guards in the entrance hall? Was it intentional? Did he want to get me off of that Ride and didn’t care about killing me to do it? Does he know I’m on a Ride? Am I, to him, now?

  My brain starts to hurt and I concentrate on figuring out what my next move should be. It’s pointless to think about Rides or try to second guess Lictor. He has seen it all happen, except for the results of my latest Rides. Only after I’m back in the real world, I’ll have the advantage. And even then, only for a moment.

  One of the guards spots us. He snaps into attention, his heels clicking together. “Lady representati—!”

  His eyes roll back into his skull in the middle of the sentence. His back hits the door, and he slides down it, armor scraping the wood. The other guard falls first on his knees, then tilts and crumples into a heap on top of the other guard. I watch the two fallen guards. Are they…? Then the one on the bottom starts snoring.

  “The Hall Watch is commanded by the Janitors,” Corum says. She clenches her hand into a fist, as the last wisps of blue light escape and float away through her fingers. ”Inside. Now.”

  Her shoulders relax and she throws handfuls of trinkets onto the table from her pockets. ”So, the Time Gem has probably been removed from the device.”

  I hear faint snoring from the other side of the door. ”What about the guards?”

  ”They’ll be asleep for now. Not a concern.”

  ”But why didn’t Lictor come himself?”

  ”Kid, I’m not going to explain the rules of the council chambers or how those rules are enforced. It’s enough for you to know that Janitors do not dare to trespass here. You have more urgent matters to consider.”

  My eyes land on the papers still on the table. The illustration of the Time Gem sits in the middle of everything.

  ”Listen. The Gem won’t be far.” She points at the badge on my chest. “It has been warded, similar to that thing. If someone had removed it from here, we would know. And disabling the wards takes days, no matter how well you’ve practiced it. They’ve been designed that way intentionally.”

  Her face is like it was in Marek’s office. Muscles moving constantly, eyes darting around. She pushes her eyebrows around with her fingers, squinting and blinking, answering questions that I barely had time to think asking.

  ”It would be interesting to know what he has put in its place and how it affects the device. I should have taken a more active part in designing the thing.” She waves the thought away and keeps furrowing her brow. ”The Gem’s not on the upper floors. Janitors aren’t welcome and he wouldn’t give it to anyone else. Ride level, most likely. In plain sight? No. But nearly. Minimum effort.”

  It makes sense, knowing Lictor. Among the fruits? In his pocket? Tucked into the couch Rworg sits on, so no one can look for it?

  ”There should be someone on the team that can fix the device. Who are the rest of the people?”

  ”Rworg, Finna and Mandollel. Mandollel is an—”

  She waves me quiet. ”I know of them. The elf can do it.” She starts to sit down, but freezes, hands on the armrests holding her up. ”Wait.”

  Rain hammers the window above, but otherwise I can’t hear anything. She stands, body tense, eyes narrowed to slits. Her fingers draw runes into the air. She does it with both hands at the same time, forming separate tangles of glowing symbols. That can’t be easy.

  “This is a first,” she says, pulling her mouth into a scowl. “Let’s go.”

  The door bursts open. The hinges wrench and scream as they are bent in the wrong direction. A shape flies in. Corum throws her hand forward, blazing with white light. The flying thing is one of the guards, thrown in like a ragdoll. Corum slams her hand closed, catching the power before it strikes the guard. What light escapes from between her fingers scorches the walls and cuts smoking gashes into her desk.

  I’m still frozen in place when the guard hits some kind of invisible barrier around her. Corum swats him down as if wiping a window, dropping him to the floor. Her other hand sweeps in an arc, and lightning strikes from it toward the door.

  The flash blinds me. The sound is so loud, it feels like a physical blow. The crack reverberates through my body, pierces my ears. The forked afterimage of the lightning bolt swims black in my vision, obscuring anything behind it. I reel away and nearly trip on a carpet. The thick pieces of glass rain down on me, luckily missing my face. The impacts feel distant, my body numb from standing so close to a lightning strike.

  ”I never manage to dodge that completely,” Lictor says, his voice muffled. He’s standing at the wrecked door, now hanging by a single bent hinge. Sparks still jump and spit, books and furniture smolder around him. His cloak is singed in places, but all the runes glow a stark bright blue against the cloth.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Corum raises her hand, but Lictor is quicker. His hands are outstretched toward Corum and tiny darts of blue light pour out from his splayed fingers. They keep coming and coming. Hundreds of small wedges of light arc out and blanket the room. Each of them flies following its own path, weaving through the rain drops falling in through the broken window.

  They fly right through her. Corum’s form ripples and the darts hit the wall and the floor behind her. One arcs to the side and hits the floor right beside my foot. I jump away as the dart snaps and sparks, leaving a fist-sized hole in the stone floor.

  I bump into Corum, who’s appeared behind me somehow. Was she there the whole time, or did she teleport?

  She pushes me from the back. ”Get down!” she shouts as I stumble forward.

  My knees hit the floor and I scramble to get behind her desk. Lights of different color reflect from the slick stone floor and the shattered glass. I get even more cuts into my hands and leave bloody palm prints on the floor. All sounds are muffled and on top of everything is a high-pitched ringing noise, louder than anything else. I crash my back into the desk, finally behind it.

  After a couple of breaths, I hazard a peek. Lictor and Corum are on opposite ends of the office, facing each other. Seeing Lictor makes me break out in goosebumps. His thin hair is plastered over his skull and sweat runs down his brow. There’s a bubble around him, exactly like Corum had. The rain runs down it, pooling on the floor, leaving a dry spot in the middle. He releases two balls of floating light from both hands. They float upward gently and spew rays of light toward Corum.

  She wrenches her hands up and a slab of the floor stretches up to form a stone shield before her. Threads of molten red slag run down from the places the rays hit the stone.

  I have never seen anything like this. I doubt no one in the village has. If I somehow get out of here alive, no one is going to believe this part.

  A shrill laugh escapes me. I’m on a Ride. No one is going to believe any part of this, at all.

  Lictor’s small eyes snap to me. Corum is behind her slab and he must have heard the giggle. His eyes move to the still open plans on the desk and his brows raise up.

  A blazing ball of fire explodes around him. The blast of heat makes me blink and lose sight of Lictor. Corum hovers above her shield, smoke rising from her outstretched hand. The heat of the explosion curls my brows and steam fills the room.

  I drop back down behind the desk. The room feels like a sauna, hot and moist. There’s a snore from my left and the guard rolls to his side. How can he still be asleep in the middle of all this? There’s a small bloody nick on his cheek. Otherwise, his armor has protected him from the falling glass. A thick wooden stick hangs on his belt, another wand.

  Fists clenched, I prepare myself. I spin, clasp the edge of the table and pull myself up to take a look. Damn. Her wand is not there.

  She and Lictor are shouting something at each other. My ears feel like they are bleeding and I can’t make out any of the words. There won’t be a better opportunity to do something than this. The guard’s wand will have to do. I yank it from the guard’s belt and stand up.

  I point the wand at Lictor and press the button. The wand spits out a gust of wind or force. It cuts a circular tunnel through the rain still falling into the room, blasting the water into the bubble around Lictor. He himself is lifted into the air and slammed into a bookshelf and kept there by the wind. I can see the disappointed pout on his face before books rain down around him and cover his face from my sight. Corum hammers him with spell after spell, electricity arcs from droplet to droplet, white light paints the shadows black, the stone shield rips itself into fist-sized chunks that crash into the bubble still surrounding Lictor.

  Then the bubble is gone. Light, fire, electricity, everything pours into the area previously covered by the shield and swirls into a vortex. I’m standing with the wand still extended to where Lictor was a moment ago. Everything takes barely a second. The blackened stones drop and bounce, hitting the smoldering heap that’s left. The afterimages still play in my eyes, but I’m not sure how much I could make out of what’s left of him, even if they didn’t. I let the wand drop from my hand and pinch my nose shut instead. The smell of ozone is so thick it makes my head spin.

  Corum’s feet land lightly next to the heap. She waves a hand, and the floor stones turn liquid. They flow over the charred remains, hiding it from sight. She waves again, and a gust of wind blows out the broken window in the ceiling, taking with it the suffocating cloud of ozone and smoke. I let go of my nose and try to steady myself, keep my legs from wobbling.

  I don’t notice at once that she’s trying to talk to me. ”Are you badly hurt?” I see, more than hear, her mumble. She’s probably not mumbling. The keening voice is still in my ears, piercing and constant.

  ”I’m fine.”

  ”No need to yell.”

  I scratch my ears, to ease the pain and the sound, but it does nothing. I wish I could rip the ears clean off my head.

  Corum gestures something, light playing around her fingers, and the room goes dark and quiet. A translucent film stretches over the broken window on the ceiling, blocking out the rain and covering what light shone in from above. She lifts up a fallen magical lamp, places it on a table, and taps on it to make it shine brighter. She’s doing it absently, while her mind is obviously somewhere else. She stops, hand on her chin. ”I have to assume we’re part of a Ride. No Janitor would come to the council chambers if they weren’t on one.”

  If I focus, I can make out what she’s saying from the wail in my ears. This is going to get old real fast. I can’t wait to get out from this Ride, but there’s so much I still need to do that I can’t leave yet. I don’t know what to say to her. She’s rolling a small piece of stone around with her foot.

  ”We have lost the War Janitor. The Etherthorn Weave will soon be in place and the mission is highly compromised. If you don’t get going soon, this conflict won’t end for years. We have to win, one way or another. Find the Gem or not, you’re leaving.”

  Things are spiralling out of control. I nibble at the nail on my left thumb, a habit I thought I got rid of already. ”I’m on a Ride too,” I finally say, keeping my voice low. “Finding the Gem is more important than going on the mission.”

  She doesn’t bat an eye. ”Wrong.”

  ”But I’ll be gone before the mission will end!”

  ”I don’t care if you’re on a Ride. You sure as hell won’t stay here playing treasure hunt when the rest of the team leaves.” She glowers at me, face painted black from the soot, eyes burning bright in contrast. “This little adventure of yours has made the situation even worse than what it already was.” There’s finality in her voice that would make Lille balk.

  I sure as hell do.