Chương 44: 44 loop 1 Part 24

The smart move had been to leave. Thirty seconds ago, when the old professor had bolted out the east doors and a dozen others followed him on instinct, it had probably looked sensible. The dining hall ceiling was gone and the open sky above us had a dragon in it. The problem was that the professor and that group had run straight out into the open air, toward the thing that had made the roar. This thought went through my mind just as the billowing dragonfire came down. But the dragonfire never reached us.

Frost caught it in a spell." [Mass Plating]!" A dozen overlapping discs of dark ash-colored glass snapped into place over the hole in the roof. Each one angled against the next so as the flames struck they slid sideways instead of pouring straight down onto us. The shadowy flames bounced off the glass and spread like water, looking for a way through. Where the smoke and fire pooled thickest, the plates drank it in and darkened into a true black, swelling up like a bruise. But they held.

And we were safe, for the moment.

"Everyone down and get behind me," Frost shouted.

"If my shields break, be ready to dodge the flames. They eat whatever they touch." That was an excellent thing to share and a terrible thing to learn while standing under them. I really felt for the people around me, so I tried to be as shocked as they looked. The plates would likely hold for a while, but a while was not forever, and the people outside had no protection at all. Every second we spent safe inside was a second they spent unsafe.

At least we had the dragon's attention, which was the kind of advantage that felt suspiciously like a disadvantage. I looked around the room, trying to figure out what to do. There were too many people to hide, too many wounded to run properly, and not enough ceiling left to pretend this was a building. Half the survivors that hadn't fled were frozen in place. The other half were staring up like the dragon might become less real if they watched it hard enough.

An idea came to me, but I needed Flag, and Flag was busy meditating. Flag, get off him and come over here, I asked through our bond. He had spent the past several minutes playing the part of an almost-four-ton paperweight. He got up at once and said, Coming, Lazlo. I'm pleased to be needed. Then he crossed over to my chair in heavy, lurching steps, sending each foot down too hard and overcorrecting on the next step. Of course, this meant Bain picked himself up.

He got to his feet faster than I'd expected and brushed dust from his robes. There was a smear of dried blood on his temple from where he had hit the floor. Fuck. Why couldn't I have knocked him out?

"Professor Frost." His voice was flat and unbothered, as if he had not just been bullied by my pet rock.

"I am still acting headmaster. You will direct this defense on my authority, and you will arrest that boy." Frost gave him a look that said Are you for real?

"If you are still acting headmaster," she said, "then act like one. Reinforce the fucking doors before the dragon comes through them and attacks us from behind." Handing Bain a chore to shut him up was the best thing I had seen all week. Bain stiffened. His mouth opened, then closed, then opened again, because apparently even near-death experiences could not stop the man from preparing a lecture.

He took two sharp steps toward the east doors, one hand lifting as if he intended to issue orders to the doors personally. He did not make it. Eirkedross hit the defenses again. It found a weak part in the roof that Frost's plates had not covered and leaned its whole weight into the building. Frost cast [Mass Plating] again, but she was not fast enough. She managed to catch the section over the students where the ceiling cracked. But on the other side of the room, over Bain, the ceiling failed.

A column of old white masonry fell down onto the spot where he had been standing. The impact shook the floor hard enough to rattle my teeth. Dust exploded outward, swallowing the east side of the room in a gray cloud. When it cleared, there was a heap of stone where Bain had been, and he was under it.

"Well," I said, because it was clear he was not getting up from that.

"That's one way to settle a chain of command." I would have felt bad about it. But he had just tried to kill me. Finn, though, had finally broken out of whatever stupor had caught him. A first-year near the broken serving line stumbled sideways, eyes blank, one hand pressed to a bleeding shoulder. Finn caught them with a gold ward before they hit the floor, then pushed another shield over two students crouched beneath a cracked beam. After that, he moved.

He became a constant blur of casting: wards, healing pulses, quick scans, quiet instructions. His hands were shaking, but his spells were not. The dungeon-track professor started pulling panic-frozen students away from the rubble. The two seniors moved with him—one manifestation and one alteration. Their joint casting slotted together so smoothly I almost hated them for making competence look efficient. My earlier idea forgotten, I sent Flag to assist. Frost held the ceiling. Finn kept people alive.

Everyone who could move started trying to get the people who could not toward the northwest doors. Which left me sitting on a chair carried by three golems. In my defense, this had been a very good arrangement until the dragon. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"Lazlo," Finn said, half-angry, half-resigned, like he didn't have the energy to fight me.

"You need to get down from there and help out."

"Yarrow," Frost interrupted without turning around to face us.

"Tell me what these golems can do."

"Well, the three carrying me can follow orders, and Flag can think for himself and cast a little magic." She looked at me, then at the chair, then at the three soulless golems beneath it.

"Can you get off those things and be serious for a moment?" I had never heard a professor talk that way. It was kind of weird, and it shocked me so much I just slid off the chair and ordered my golems to put it down. She was right, and I hated it. I had finally achieved my dream of never having to walk, and it had lasted all of five hours.

"Put those three behind us," Frost said.

"Make them the rear wall. Finn, ward them if you can." She did not ask any follow-up questions, which was nice. I liked it when professors listened to me. I may have played the part of idiot often, but I was not actually one.

"These won't hold," Frost said. Above us, the glass plates trembled under another wash of shadow flame.

"Two more hits, maybe three. So we either move now or we die." I had figured that out already, and I was starting to count the time. We had maybe a minute. The plates were a bad ceiling, and we had already seen what happened when a ceiling decided it was finished being architecture. Rest in Piss, Bain. Oh, I was being a bit bitter tonight.

"I think the best route is through the northwest doors," I said.

"They open toward the Green, which is bad, but not as bad as the east doors where the panicking idiots went."

"You're right," Frost said.

"Besides, they need our help. As soon as we leave here, the dragon's going to pick them off one by one." She lifted her voice for the room to hear.

"On your feet, everyone. After me. Don't run, but don't stop, either. Anyone who freezes is going to be dead weight." Nobody moved. I tried hard not to roll my eyes. Bunch of fucking idiots. I was lazy, and I had moved more than they had today. But sometimes panic did not make people run; it could lock them down and turn them to stone. Half the room had run, and the other half had decided the safest thing to do was nothing. So Frost and I pushed them forward.

I shoved a few people out of their stupor, and they finally started moving. Then Frost and the two seniors helped, and we herded them away from the center of the room. Thane was near the broken serving line, staring at the wreckage with a strange, inappropriate brightness in his eyes. The ceiling started to crack. We moved. Frost had my golems marching behind us as we stepped out toward the Green, taking up the rear. She leveled her wand at the ruined ceiling and shouted, " [Redirect]!"

The surviving glass tore down off the dead roof, every disc at once, and she twisted them toward my golems. The plates locked across their backs and shoulders, turning the three soulless golems into a walking shield wall. Then she cast another round of [Mass Plating], and a second layer of ash-glass formed over the first. We made for the northwest doors at the pace of the slowest wounded student, which was not fast at all. The three plated golems walked at our back the whole way.

Finn's wards wrapped around them in layers of gold, thin and strained but holding. Eirkedross came down before we had cleared half the floor. Its mouth crashed against the golems with a weight I felt through the stone beneath my feet. Shadow poured over the plated bodies, and the glass drank it in and darkened—smoke-gray to true black, just like before. First, one plate gave out. Then a second. Then the last glass broke, and the dragonfire hit the bare stone bodies underneath. But the golems kept walking.

For all the benefits of a golem with a soul, the automatons were fearless. Or maybe fearlessness was giving them too much credit. Then fear became panic, and the students surged for the doors all at once. Twenty people through one pair of doors was a problem on a good day, and right now was not a good day. Frost's shields had almost broken, Finn was breathing hard enough that even I noticed, and we were about to lose our last standing defense. Then Thane stopped walking. He took a quick look around the room.

And cracked his knuckles.

"Oh, well," he said.

"Can't put this off any longer, I suppose." There was a strange delight in the way he spoke.

"Oh, yes," he said.

"This will do beautifully."

"Professor?" Frost said.

"Don't worry about me. Get everybody out, you fool." He turned back to the room.

"Today's lesson is how an enchanter clears a room," Thane said, voice carrying through the broken hall, "because every room wants to be useful, after all. Most are simply never asked properly." He lifted his wand, and his smile widened.

"And, oh, this room has so many things. In fact, it has an army of them." He shouted, " [Army of Things]!" A tidal wave of magic blasted forth from his wand. He asked the whole room at once. And the room agreed to his request. A table tore up out of the floor; cutlery rose in a glittering sheet of metal, every knife and fork remembering it had been ground to a point. Chair legs, shelf boards, serving rails, plates, and a hundred shards of window that had finally let go all lifted together.

The broken pieces of grey plate tore themselves off the golems' backs. All of it gathered into one collected mass, swirling in a maelstrom. And then the room threw itself at Eirkedross. The debris hit first and did what debris does—which is close any eye that it hits. The dragon flinched, head twisting, roaring in pain. Then the plates struck and shattered against it. It was not enough to wound it, but it certainly gave it pause. The tables and wood and glass followed.

They hammered against its snout, its jaw, the soft gaps around its eyes. The whole dining hall became Thane's argument that everything, under the right circumstances, could be useful. I was the only one watching, grateful that [Wideview] was active. We rushed forward, out of the dining hall, through the doors, onto the Green. I paused at the doorway.

"Thane!" I shouted.

"Come on! Come with us!"

"Go on, dear boy," he called, not looking back at me.

"I have the dining hall well in hand! I promise!" For a quick second, it looked like he did, and then the storm ran out. The last fork struck Eirkedross in the cheek and spun away into the rubble. The final shard of glass broke against one black scale and fell smoking to the floor. Thane stood alone in the gutted dining hall, wand lowered, frowning like he had just run out of lesson plan halfway through the lesson. Eirkedross opened its eyes. And roared.