“Perhaps you could set up more shackles on this side,” Jordan said. He had his own wand out, pointing at the floor. “They’d get caught in the quicksand and then have a whole other set of shackles to break through. With all the trouble they’re having with the first one, it should buy plenty of time to find other solutions. Like grabbing a few teachers or security guards.”
With a slight groan, Irene slapped her forehead. She should have been doing that anyway. The entire hallway, lined with nonstop shackles. It would take these things days to escape had she done that instead of sitting around watching them.
But she kept her mouth clamped shut. After rubbing her forehead slightly, she went back to liquefying the tiles without so much as a nod.
In retrospect, she should have sent everyone away while drawing the initial shackles. It was somewhat surprising that she could. The contract specified spoken or written words, so sigils and circles must not have counted. Maybe she could use sign language to tell her friends what she had been up to.
Of course, that plan required learning sign language. Worse, it involved Shelby learning sign language. That was never going to happen.
Shelby gripped her arm. “Did you hear that?”
Manipulating the floor was going better than she had expected. Jordan was helping, but she could feel her own magic flowing much easier than it had when she had first failed at summoning the imp. Maybe because she had done this before? Or she was just getting noticeably better at magic in the two months since the previous incident.
“I’m serious,” Shelby said, tightening her grip. “Like glass cracking.”
The all too familiar sound of her shackles failing echoed through the hallway. Maybe it was because she had turned her back or because she had walked out of sight of the creatures. She couldn’t say for sure.
“They’re coming,” Irene whispered as the first creature rounded the corner of Eva’s room.
It had the unfortunate fate to tread on top of Lucy.
Her limp tentacles jumped like they had been electrocuted. As one, they lifted up and encircled the creature, mimicking the bulb of a tulip.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Shelby groaned.
Irene might have been as well, had she not noticed the second creature charging around the side of Lucy. It completely ignored the pig-like screams and pieces of violet-tinted flesh flying out of the mass of tentacles.
It reached the edge of her quicksand and jumped.
Gripping Shelby’s arm, Irene pulled her sister back. Her moat was nowhere near long enough to stop it.
Time seemed to slow down as its round face filled with sharp teeth flew towards them, its tentacles flailing around in the air.
Irene’s vision went black.
Shelby’s scream only compounded her despair tenfold.
Until, underneath Shelby’s scream, she heard a sound not unlike a hunk of meat being dropped on the floor.
The darkness passed over her and she could see again. Shelby at her side, eyes wide in horror. The walls and the floor.
And Jordan. He stood just in front of them. A wall of darkness stretching from one side of the hallway to the other.
The darkness collapsed after a moment with a gasp from Jordan, perspiration dripping from his face.
There was the creature, lying on its side in her moat of quicksand.
Suppressing the desire to let loose a hysterical laugh, Irene caught her wits in an instant. Gripping her wand, she hardened the tile as fast as she could. It was much easier than liquefying it in the first place.
Not all of the creature was stuck. At least half of the snake-like tendrils coming off its back were free. And they were not pleased.
The tiles cracked. Even with Irene repairing them as fast and as best as she was able to, it wouldn’t hold for long.
“Lucy!” Irene shouted. “Listen to the sound of my voice and come here. Crawl towards me please!”
Another crack in the tile. Irene tried to repair it as well, but a third crack.
Lucy spat out something from her bulb of tentacles. A violet-stained slab of meat.
“Hurry!”
The mass of tentacles stretched and inchwormed along the ground. Slowly. Too slowly.
A chunk of tile came off the creature. It clambered to its feet and glared at Irene.
That was the last thing it did.
Lucy’s tentacles came down on top of it. Unlike last time, there was no curtain of tentacles shielding them from the sight.
