The side exit opened onto a hall lined with office doors. Tucked between the doors were tables and chairs where students could study. I grabbed one of the biggest chairs I could find (it was still kind of pathetic), threw it behind me, and booked it toward the main hall.

I could hear Aubert coming. The sound of mad humming and crashes made me think he didn’t like the fact I had a head start, so he decided to blast a straight path to the door.

My boots cracked against the floor as I ran. I turned a corner and stopped long enough to wrench them off my feet. Two steps later, I stopped again to remove my socks. I needed as much purchase as I could get.

At the end of the hall, I saw another door. I thought I knew what it would open into. My hand was on the handle when I heard Aubert reach the mouth of the hallway.

I flattened myself against the door. If I tried to turn around, Aubert would see the movement.

A second later, I heard the sound of my boot falling back to the floor.

He’d picked one up.

He knew I’d passed this way.

Okay. Maybe he’d assume I’d thrown them there and kept running down the main hall.

Right?

An honest-to-god fireball flew down the hall toward me. The heat pushed into me long before the flames roared by and struck the wall to my left. I had to jump back to avoid the explosion. I only got mildly roasted, but it had revealed where I was hiding.

I yanked the door open. As I thought, it was another lecture hall. I had come in the left-side entrance. I ran up the side aisle toward the double-door exit at the back.

Which only goes to show that a person isn’t going to think clearly when they’re being chased by murderers and fireballs. I had been at one end of the hall. Aubert had been at the other. Of the two of us, Aubert was much closer to those doors than I was.

Fortunately, my need for speed meant I wasn’t slowing down for anything. Not to think. And not to open a door that I already knew opened outward.

I slammed into it going as fast as I could. The door swung out and hit Aubert in the face.

“Ha!” I screamed.

Then I remembered that if Aubert hadn’t been stopped by a wolfman and a vampire, he probably couldn’t be stopped by a door to the face. I ran and turned around the next corner.

Aubert was right behind me.

This hall did not end with a door to the outside, as one might have hoped. It ended in stairs. I sprinted up those stairs and tried not to think about the fact I was running on pure adrenaline. No complaints. It had served me well so far.

At the top of the stairs, a blast of white power knocked me to my chest. Aubert grabbed my ankle. I flipped around and tried to kick him in the face. I missed, but I managed to jerk my leg free and pull Aubert off balance. His knees hit the stairs, and his hands crashed down to catch him. I saw a glimpse of his bloody nose and bruised face.

“Later!” I cried.

I got to my knees and stumbled onward in a mutant gait until I could get my feet under me.

“Emerra!” Aubert yelled.

“Jerk,” I hissed to myself.

How dare he call me—like he knew me. Like we had anything to talk about. He made Miranda cry. He brought down Lord Spike. Three Dead Enders had to raise their glasses because they weren’t four anymore, and I would never meet Trevon Wayde and get to play the real-or-fake game.

I wiped the tears off my face with my free hand.

Oh! Handy! Another staircase.

This time I went down. Even with my adrenaline and whatever remained from Olivia’s boost, I could feel the weariness spreading through my body. I needed to hide somewhere.

I started trying all the door knobs I could find. At last, one turned under my hand.

Thank you, absent-minded professor.

The last thing I saw as the door closed behind me was Aubert’s eyes meeting mine as he came around the corner.

Great. He knew I was in here. I didn’t need a hiding spot, I needed an exit. I threw the lock, ran to the middle of the room…

…and stopped.

Dead end.

I was in an office like Wayde’s and Frost’s. The only other door in the room led to an even smaller room—one where I wouldn’t be able to go for the door if, by some miracle, Aubert decided to lunge after me.

Not that he needed to. Not with those fireballs.

I turned toward the row of windows. We were on the first floor! Maybe I could get out that way.

But I had stopped for too long. All the exhaustion and pain from my prolonged sprint came to call in my debts. I wasn’t sure I could reach the windows, let alone crawl over the shelves to get to them.

I laughed and turned to the door.

“Not bad, Emerra,” I said.

Good would have been if I’d gotten away, but I didn’t do too bad.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Aubert melted the handle right out of the door. Slags of metal dropped to the tiles below. The door swung open.

Aubert came into the room, but he didn’t turn on the lights. The only reason we could see each other was because of the lamps along the sidewalk outside the windows.

“Give me the device, Emerra,” Aubert said.

I wished he sounded arrogant, mean, or evil. Anything other than the normal voice he used to talk about coffee.

“Why don’t you leave me alone, Joel? You’ve sold your soul! You’ve got your power! Why isn’t it enough for you?”

“I’m going to need that device to get away.”

I made the noise of a buzzer: “Errrrrrrr. Wrong answer! This thing is empty! You need this device and at least one soul.” I raised my hands in a shrug and looked from side to side. “Huh. Looks like mine’s the only soul around. There goes my incentive to hand it over.”

Aubert’s jaw clenched.

“Go ahead and tell me you won’t kill me if I give it to you,” I said. “Let’s see if I believe you.”

He took a step toward me. I dodged behind a desk.

“Why don’t you shoot one of your patented fireballs at me?” I asked. “Or that creepy white lightning?”

“The ‘lightning,’ as you call it, might destroy the device.”

“And you’re all out of fireballs?” When he didn’t answer, I laughed. “Oh, dang. That’s right. Fighting Conrad and Darius must have taken a lot of spells. You really do need this to get away.”

I saw the runes grow under his palm, but I didn’t have a shield. I tried to dodge. A whip of ice came out of nowhere and sliced along the side of my head and my shoulder.

“I have other spells,” Aubert said.

“Hey!” I yelled from where I was crouched on the floor. “I’m not supposed to fight!”

“Don’t worry, you’re not putting up much of a fight.”

The man had a point.

I saw his hands start to glow and tried to scrabble along the floor. Chunks of ice bit my knees, bare feet, and hands, but I managed to move fast enough they couldn’t hold me.

“I’m surprised you still have ice spells,” I said.

“They don’t work well against strong people. They should work fine against you.”

Clear of the desk, I stood up, grabbed a book off the top, and threw it at Aubert.

He deflected it with another burst of power. I threw up my hands to protect my eyes from the light. The room flew by me in a rush of white glare and shadows as I was hurled backward. My back hit the wall and I dropped.

I took a poll of all my body parts. They were still attached, but if this was the kind of crap I was going to put them through, they weren’t happy about that. They also wanted to lay there and do nothing, but my brain and my ego—the merciless tyrants—decided we were going to get up.

I got to my feet. Aubert had stopped six feet away from me.

“You haven’t used any magic,” he said.

“I’m saving it up for the big finale,” I said.

“That’s what I’m worried about.”

“Hey, can I ask you a question?”

He eyed me and said nothing.

“Are you any better at seeing and sensing magic than you were before you used the device? Ashworth will want to know.”

His face suddenly screwed up in a furious sneer. He raised his hand. The rune was already glowing white hot.

A slow and horrible pressure began to build in my chest. The pain and weight of it crawled up from inside my sternum, filling my throat, my mouth, my sinuses. Two bubbles of water built up like tears around my nostrils. When I opened my mouth, liquid ran over my tongue and down my chin.

I was drowning.

My feet lifted from the ground. I floated in a world of water that was nowhere but inside me.

“I didn’t know how this one would work,” Aubert said. “I thought it would take too long in a fight, but you looked like you were tired.”

I couldn’t breathe. The desperate need for air filled my body like a scream. Free of the ground and weightless, my limbs shuddered. Those brand-new, magical eyes of mine started to fade.

A crash off to my side threw glass shards across my legs. I hit the ground and vomited out what felt like a gallon of water. It spewed from my mouth and dripped out my nose.

I didn’t care. Between my body-wracking coughs, I dragged in gasps of air. Even the flavor of my stomach acid couldn’t spoil that sweet taste.

I looked up. Conrad had opened the window with a rock, then dived through the broken glass and thrown himself on Aubert. I could see parts of the sorcerer’s blue shield. The rest of it was hidden by the flash of fangs and their struggling mass. The wolfman was trying to hold down the sorcerer’s hands. Or rip them off.

But Aubert had his power blast. He didn’t need hands for that.

“Darius!” I screamed.

There was a rush of movement at the open window. The vampire slid through the shards without disturbing any of them. Maybe my vision was still blurry, but he seemed dim, or thin, like he wasn’t quite there.

When Aubert let out another massive burst of energy, Conrad and I were both thrown back, but Darius didn’t move. He took three steps toward Aubert, each footfall making more noise than the last. With the final step, I could hear the crunch of the glass shifting under his dress shoes.

Darius’s hand shot out and grabbed Aubert by the neck. I heard the impact. I saw the sorcerer’s head snap back, but under Vasil’s hand was the unfailing blue glow of Aubert’s shield.

Aubert smiled.

I think that was a mistake. His last one, as it happened.

“You can’t strangle me like this,” he said.

“You’re right, Mr. Aubert,” Darius said. “Conrad?”

The wolfman came up behind the sorcerer, grabbed his chin and the back of his head, and with one swift jerk, snapped his neck.

I did not realize how loud the noise would be. Or how far his head would twist. Or how disturbing it would be to watch.

I winced, but my eyes were still on Aubert when Darius let go. The sorcerer hit the floor like a bag of spare parts.

Conrad nodded to Darius. The vampire nodded back.

They both turned to me.

“Emerra?” Darius said.

I nodded. Emerra. Yes. That was me. Still Emerra Cole.

“Are you hurt?”

I waved him off. “You’re not going to want to come any closer.”

The vampire stopped. “Why?”

Conrad didn’t. His boots made ripples in the vomit-water as he came and crouched beside me. “All of that came out of her.” He put a hand on my arm. “Are you all right?”

I nodded. Then I shook my head.

“Where are your shoes?” Darius asked.

“In the hall,” I croaked. “Somewhere.”

“Let’s get you out of here,” Conrad said.

“There’s glass everywhere,” the count pointed out.

The wolfman thought for a second, then turned. “Climb on my back.”

With shaky hands, I grabbed his arm and pulled myself up.

“Can you hold on?” Conrad asked.

“Yeah.” I put my arm around his neck. “Am I going to be too heavy?”

The wolfman chuffed. “You? No.”

A second later, I managed to get my other arm around his neck. He stood up, and tucked his good arm—the one that hadn’t been stabbed with the silver knife—under me.

Darius held out his hand. “The device?”

I had been clenching the thing so hard, it hurt when I peeled my fingers away from the stone.

The count inspected it. “Maybe the scroll will give us a clue on how to disassemble it.”

When we turned to go, we saw Big Jacky standing over the body of Joel Aubert. I couldn’t tell how he’d arrived, and it felt like he’d always been there.

“Mr. Noctis?” Darius said.

Jacky stared at Joel’s corpse. “I got Emerra’s voicemail. I was on my way here when I felt Aubert die.” He raised his skull. “Do you have the device?”

Darius passed it over. “We’ll have to take it back to Iset to see how it works.”

“I have no intention of making it work.”

Jacky held the device up. The air lifted it out of his hand. It revolved in mid-air, then burst apart in a silent explosion that halted almost as fast is it had started. The scattered parts hovered inches away from each other.

Black essence rose from the nothing in the center. It spilled over, dripped down the still rising essence, and disappeared before it touched the ground.

“Who were they?” I asked.

“Slaves,” Jacky said. “There are too many to name.”

“You know their names?”

“All of them.”

When the flow of essence stopped, the pieces of the device clattered to the floor.

My body heaved with my sigh, and I buried my face in the fur of Conrad’s neck.

“I must smell like puke,” I grumbled.

“A bit,” he admitted. “I don’t mind.”

I used the last smidge of energy in my whole body to lift my hand and ruffle his ears. It was totally worth it.

“Thank you, wolf-boy.”