“Can’t come soon enough,” the man mumbled.
Sato turned his back to him once more and started gingerly walking over the rubble again. According to their best guess, they were currently over the section the fangen and other creatures had been running toward, but everything looked the same from the outside—broken and dusty. Keeping his arms out for balance, he walked across the crooked stacks of stones, looking through the gaps and cracks for any sign of . . . he didn’t know. Something.
A few minutes later, he spotted it. Far down below the debris, just visible through the layers of stone, he saw a glowing blue light that pulsed every two or three seconds, flashing more brilliantly before fading again to a dull glow.
“Hey!” he shouted. “Come over here and look!”
Tollaseat’s face lit up with excitement, and he started lumbering his way over to where Sato stood. The man was so much taller and bigger than an average man, and Sato feared he’d crash down in a cloud of dust and rock chips at any second. But he finally made it and raised his shoulders in question.
“Down there.” Sato pointed.
Tollaseat put a big hand on Sato’s shoulder and leaned in to take a look. Sato flexed his leg muscles to keep his knees from collapsing under the added weight.
“Well, I’ll be,” the man said, the glow from below reflecting in his large eyes. “Take me spine out and tickle ’er up and down! What in the blazes you reckon that is, sir?”
Sato looked at his friend and best soldier. “I don’t know. But this can’t be a coincidence. Those nasty things of Jane’s were running this way, and then they all seemed to vanish, only to reappear later. And now there’s a flashing blue light shining in a place that doesn’t use electricity.”
“Right, you are. Can’t be two toads bumpin’ tongues on the same fly, that’s for sure.”
“Huh?” When Tollaseat opened his mouth to answer, Sato cut him off. “Never mind. Let’s get down to that thing. Time’s running out.”
He planted his feet as firmly as he could then bent over to lift a piece of rock directly above the odd blue glow. He chucked it to the side, the crack of it hitting the rubble barely audible over the noises of the Void.
In the shadow of the huge gray funnel of mist filled with lightning and thunder, Sato and Tollaseat started digging through the ruins of Mistress Jane’s castle.
Paul was curled up in his bed—or the bed he’d been given at the Grand Canyon headquarters—staring at the wall. He’d never felt so low in all his life, and there’d been some freaky, scary moments over the last couple of years. But right that second, he just wanted to sink into the mattress, fall asleep, and never wake up again. Everything had gone so wrong.
How could the whole world—scratch that, the whole universe and every single Reality within it—be in so much trouble? Again? Mistress Jane and her fancy schmancy Blade of Shattered Hope had almost set off a chain reaction that would’ve destroyed the universe. Paul didn’t care about the specifics, but he knew that Tick had saved them all. Yeah, he’d been sucked away into the Nonex, but deep down, Paul had known the kid was okay and that he’d find his way back somehow. Or, at least, Paul had told himself that.
But now all this? Some big gray cloud called the Void from the Fourth Dimension was eating away at a planet? And then Jane said it would keep on going once that was all done. And then Tick had to make it worse by running off against Master George’s wishes. Which wasn’t so bad to Paul—what was bad was the fact that Tick hadn’t come back. And Rutger couldn’t get a lock on Tick’s nanolocator. The Realitant system kept saying that it was blocked, a thing that had obviously bewildered and bamboozled everyone listening.
Not Paul. To him, the news had just made him sick to his stomach. He’d insisted on leaving, going to his room. Sorry, so sorry, but I don’t feel so well. Which was the absolute truth. They were supposed to take care of Chu and Mistress Jane then have fun exploring other worlds for the rest of their lives. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Paul wanted to shout at the top of his lungs. Maybe pound on some walls while he was at it.
He sat up.
He had to do something. Master George and the others had talked and talked around the conference room table and had come up with absolutely nothing to show for it. Except that they were going to keep researching, keep tabs on things, blah blah blah. Paul couldn’t stand the thought of all that wasted time and energy. A big glob of fog was eating away at Reality, and his best friend had gone missing.
He had to do something, and he had to do something now, or he’d go completely nutso bat-crazy. Ignoring the ache and nausea in his belly, he slid off the bed and opened his door, stepping out into the hallway. It was right then that an image of a box popped into his head. A little metal box with a green button. And Paul knew exactly where Master George had placed it.
He started walking in that direction.