“I used the invisibility potion and it worked,” Isabel said, “for about a minute, then I became visible again right under them. They almost got me. I’m just glad they don’t like the indoors.”
“Small favors,” Alexander said. “Looks like they’re using your sword as bait. I wouldn’t recommend going back for it.”
“Wasn’t planning on it,” Isabel said, removing her scabbard from her belt and setting it against the wall. “In fact, I might look for another way out of this place just in case they’re patient enough to wait for me here.”
“Probably not a bad idea,” Alexander said. “I asked the sovereigns about the ghidora. Malachi said it’s a stalker-demon sort of like a scourgling.”
“Dear Maker,” Isabel whispered.
“Once summoned, it requires a sacrifice for each target it’s given,” Alexander said, “and the one sacrificed has to have a link with the firmament, even a limited link like that of a sorcerer.”
“What’s it do in the meantime?” Isabel asked.
“Apparently, it goes to the place where it was originally summoned and turns to stone.”
“Can it be killed?”
“With sufficient damage,” Alexander said. “Its skin isn’t impenetrable like a scourgling but its hide is like armor.”
“What’s it look like?”
“Malachi didn’t know since he’s never summoned one,” Alexander said.
“All right, so where do I go from here?”
“I’ll guide you,” Alexander said, transforming into a ball of light and floating slowly down the corridor, which ran straight into the mountain for several hundred feet before coming to a spiral staircase leading up. By the time Isabel reached the top, her legs burned from the exertion and she was breathing heavily. The stairs ended on a landing facing a bare stone wall with a lever beside it. She pulled the lever and watched the wall slide toward her, then swing open on a hinge.
She peered into the room beyond. It looked like it had once been a reading room but now the walls were lined with moldering mounds of decaying books. After she stepped inside, the door closed behind her, forming a nondescript wall.
“This must have been one of his escape routes,” she said.
“That’s what I figured too,” Alexander said, though he didn’t change from his form as a ball of light.
“Huh, I didn’t know you could do that.”
“I’m getting better with practice.”
Isabel headed for the only door and stepped through into a larger room that looked like it was once the central room in an elaborate suite of living quarters. The furniture was all decayed beyond recognition and the place felt as cold and dead as the reading room, except for the freshly killed creature splayed out on the floor and the signs of a recent struggle.
Isabel couldn’t even begin to guess what the creature was. It looked like a cross between a giant rat and an armadillo, heavily scaled along the sides and back with an elongated snout ending in fangs. It must have weighed a hundred pounds.
“Looks like Hector and Horace were here,” Isabel said. “I’d feel a lot better if I had a sword.”
“I can imagine. We should keep moving.”
Alexander led the way, bobbling through the air and illuminating the path as he navigated through the living quarters of the underground facility. Passing an intersection, Isabel heard a squeal and a scuffling coming toward her from the darkness. She immediately started casting a spell.
Another creature like the one killed in the living quarters charged toward her out of the darkness of the side passage. She released her force-push, sending the ugly-looking beast sprawling backward. It scrambled to its feet and raced away back into the darkness.
“At least it’s a coward,” Isabel said. “What do you think we should call those things?”
“Ugly. Come on, let’s get out of here before it comes back with its friends.”
A few minutes and a number of twists and turns through the sprawling complex later, they came to a large room with a line of support pillars running down the middle. In the corners near the door stood a pair of grotesquely ugly statues; the carved stone creatures were squatting down on top of short round pedestals with their clawed hands grasping the edge between their feet. Their faces were almost like a dog’s, except their snouts were shorter; their mouths were open wide, revealing rows of needlelike teeth. Horns swept back and out from their brows, and batlike wings sprouted from their shoulders.
When Isabel stepped into the room, she heard a muffled click and felt the stone beneath her feet shift ever