Daggeuro accepted the Nozz-A-La and downed it in one go, and when Byron opened the mini fridge again, he and Kathy stared, bewildered, into it. "Is there something amiss," the kennin asked.
"Yeah, that first one was the last one on the door," said Kathy.
"Clearly not. The whole shelf is full," said Daggeuro.
"Precisely why we're put off," Byron said. He pulled out the luncheon meats and bread, the cheese slices, and began making them all sandwiches. "It doesn't matter. Who are you going to guide next, hon?"
"Senta," said Kathy. She was already at the gotrin's monitor, flipping through cameras. "Baron Dimanche's area looks like a fairly straightforward deal, lots of izzes. His combat magic may be cut off, but he still has Serpantus and all of his powders and talismans. Senta's area is full of sloping corridors and smooth concrete chambers, so he's going to have a hard time stopping himself."
"Izzes," Byron asked, handing her and Daggeuro each a sandwich.
"About a dozen of the black ones that I could see, plus some kind of owl-man knights," Kathy replied. "They look diseased. Check it out," she said, cycling through camera views until they spotted one close to a camera. The fellow looked like an owl faerie in armor, but his feathers were molting and half of his yellow beak had been eaten away by some vicious red sore that ran with green ichor, which it wiped away with a dirty brown rag from one of its pouches. "Notice something else," she asked.
"No, what," asked Byron.
"The izzes are keeping their distance from the owls," Kathy said. "Watch." Byron and Daggeuro watched as a pair of the spherical black creatures crept past the owl man, who, upon noticing them, kicked out at them and snarled.
"Wretched things," the owl man grumbled, glowering after them. The izzes chuckled wickedly, then ran off out of view.
"These owls are here against their will," Daggeuro said. "Like the bee men, they're trapped here, but they seem to be in a kind of forced servitude. Would that we could talk to them."
"Wish in one hand, shit in the other, see which fills up first," said Byron. Kathy flipped back to Senta.
"Okay, can you hear me, Senta," she asked.
"Yes."
"All right. When you open your door, you'll be in a flat gray chamber with two connecting corridors. You'll want to take the left branch. There's a slope in the floor, leads down a hallway to a circular chamber with five numbered slopes. You'll want to go down number four. Watch out for little black creatures with knives and big teeth, they're called izzes. And you might run into an owl-man knight. Don't let them touch you; I think whatever disease they have might be infectious."
"What's wrong with them?"
"Short version? Looks like they're rotting apart. Tell it back to me."
"Left, down, ramp four. Got it," the gotrin said. Kathy, Byron and Daggeuro watched on screen as Senta rolled out into the first room. Three globular shapes dropped down from the ceiling, off-screen, forming into izzes as Senta drew his daggers. He managed to kill one before finding himself having to drop to his knees to defend himself, snap-rolling back and forth to avoid being slashed, stabbed or bitten. He managed to kill the other two after a minute, but he was gashed along his right cheek by the time it was over.
Kathy could see his eyes narrow on screen, assessing his combat skills with the skates, likely reforming his tactics for the near future in his mind. He wheeled to the left hallway, and proceeded to roll down the slight incline. Kathy changed cameras, watching as the gotrin picked up speed, knives held like ski poles, crouching down for aerodynamics.
She changed cameras again to the circular concrete pad, almost yelping as one of the owl-men came into the chamber from ramp two, a huge tulwar in hand. He turned toward Senta, likely hearing the wheels on the floor. Kathy keyed the mic and blurted, "Owl knight ahead, tulwar! He knows you're coming!"
Kathy, Byron and Daggeuro watched as Senta, using his momentum, sprang up over the horizontal sweep of the tulwar, his right hand whipping out. His dagger carved a bloody swath through the knight's throat, and the gotrin landed hard, legs flying out from under him. He skidded into a wall with a grunt, but was quickly up again as the owl-man fell down, bleeding out.
The gotrin wheeled over and crouched down by the wounded man's head, blocking the camera's view. Senta whispered something, and as he rose, made a strange gesture over the fallen owl. He looked about, and headed for ramp number four.
Kathy changed cameras again, now looking at the rounded chamber at the bottom of ramp four. She used the controls to pan around the room, checking as high up as she could. The room hosted three closed doors, labeled Green, Blue and Red. Kathy tapped commands into the console, switching to see past the Red door. Beyond that door was a grand dining hall, similar to the one that had been used in King Ovin's Royal Manor. Laying atop the table was a giant eagle-like creature with a deer's head, viciously barbed antlers sticking out from its skull, eyes glowing green.
Kathy switched to the view behind the Green door, which showed a fenced in yard in which dozens of white izzes lounged or frolicked about. Several black izzes hung about on the edges of the yard by the fencing. Too many, she knew, for Senta to take.
The camera view behind the Blue door revealed another long ramp, down into dimly lit space. Switching to the folowing camera, she saw two owl-men, both in an advanced stage of whatever illness was killing them, slumped against opposite walls of a chamber in which stood a glowing golden door. Their weapons and armor had been cast aside, their hands and faces warped by the sore red flesh and boils that were eating away at them.
She keyed the microphone as she returned the camera to the chamber with the colored doors. Senta rolled into view, barely using the heel brakes in time to keep from crashing into the Red door. "Senta? Go through the Blue door. It's another ramp down to a room with two owls, but they're out of it, on the floor. There's a golden door there, I think that's your exit!"
"Understood," said the gotrin. The trio in the monitor room watched as he rolled over to the Blue door and pulled it open, disappearing from camera view. Kathy switched to the bottom chamber, gasped as she saw the owl men jumping to their feet, alerted to Senta's coming by the echo of his wheels. But they didn't hold their weapons or don their armor, so what were they up to?
Too late Kathy saw it- two lines of razor wire, one held in each hand by the owl men, one low and one high. They locked themselves in place at the bottom of the ramp, and Kathy keyed the mic just in time to scream, "Senta!"
With the force of his downhill momentum, the gotrin's head was cut cleanly free of his neck, his torso from his waist, spilling his organs all over the floor. His bloody hips and legs carried all the way to the golden door as the trio screamed in horror and dismay at what they saw on the monitor. The owl men had been pulled off of their feet by the impact, and they lay weeping on the chamber floor, banging their fists on the concrete. One of them raised its head, staring beseechingly at the camera.
"There! We killed him! We killed the intruder, you demon! Now let us free," it screamed, hurling its end of the razor wire handles aside. "Let us freeeeee!"
In the control room, the only sound that remained was Kathy's sobs.
It was almost four minutes before anything else took their attention, a grunt and crash behind them. All three wheeled about, ready to attack whatever had joined them. But immediately they subsided as Baron Dimanche rolled off of the couch, covered in bruises and shallow gashes, cursing and muttering under his breath. His hands quickly wavered over his body, faint blue light from healing spells shimmering over him. His clothes were bloody and ragged, and he was barely upright when Kathy fell on him in a weeping, exhausted embrace.
"Well, it's good to see you too, Lady Potts," he said, flabbergasted, looking confused at Byron and Daggeuro. "Um, Kathy? My ribs are still healing," he said softly, easing her off of him. She turned and wrapped herself around Byron, and the humans rocked each other where they stood as Daggeuro pulled Dimance aside. "What's de mattah wit' her?"
"We just saw Senta die," Daggeuro said quietly. "Razor wire, decapitation. It was messy."
"Oh," said Dimanche, pressing his lips together in a tight line. "I couldn't wait anymore. Somet'ing was trying to get into my cell. Turned out to be izzes."
"You know of those creatures?"
"Yes. Dey are spectahs of de Spirit Plane, nasty leetle pricks," said Dimanche. "Dere were lots of dem. Thankfully, my talismans were all charged." He peered over his shoulder at Kathy and Byron, seated together on the sofa now. "Well, we're all here now. What happens next?"
"I don't know," said Daggeuro. The lights in the room began to flicker, and the vault door of the room began spinning its dial on its own. It flew open with a crash, and brilliant white light washed over them all.
The company once more lost its sense of time and place.
When Kathy's vision cleared, she sat up like a puppet, exhausted and weary. She found herself laying in a luxurious pillowtop bed, Byron laid out beside her. It was a four poster, set in a large, dark room with two similar beds. Sitting up on those were Daggeuro and Dimanche, respectively. She recognized the room at once.
"We're in Harry Potter's dorm room at Hogwarts," she said.
"Quite right," said a strange voice from her right. All eyes darted that way, falling upon a gaunt fellin man in green cotton trousers and a black tunic top. "One of the safe places, this." Daggeuro was out of his bed in a heartbeat, blades drawn as he squared off with the malnourished cat faerie.
"Name yourself," he barked.
"I am named Salag Trum," said the fellin with a sweeping bow. "And the lady speaks mostly true. This realm is fashioned after the castle in J.K. Rowling's series of Harry Potter novels, though it isn't that wonderful place."
"What are you doing here," Kathy asked, rousing Byron from his slumbering state.
"Oh, I've been trapped in the cube for quite some time, dear, learned a few tricks to survive. I dare say I've become a semi-permanent resident," said the fellin, scratching at his left cheek. "I was thrown in here by the blue wyrm Paelok when I dared to try and unify the fellin clans in the east." Daggeuro sheathed his blades and snorted, hands now on his hips.
"I thought your name was familiar. The Great Clouder Disaster. That was twenty-two years ago, now. Salag Trum, the world has moved on," said the kennin warrior. Trum shrugged his shoulders.
"If you say so, let it be so. Now, the lights come through here every couple of nights, so for the time being, you can rest up, prepare yourselves for what comes next. As for me, I'm off to the kitchens."
"Wait," Kathy said. "Before you go, how do you know about Harry Potter? About Hogwarts?"
"The books are in the library," said Trum plainly. "All kinds of books. Might be worth a look if you decide to explore." He left them then, humming to himself and skipping off into the castle. Kathy looked around at the others, shook her head.
"I'm just going to lay down for a few," she said weakly, returning to the bed and curling up atop the blankets, trying to push the image of Senta falling apart from her mind.