“What do you think of my place?” asked the dwarf.
“This is…” Artemis gestured to their surroundings. “Amazing. You hollowed all of this out yourself. How long have you been here?”
The dwarf shrugged. “Coupla years. Off and on, you know. I have a dozen of these little bolt-holes all over the place. I got tired of being a law-abiding citizen. So I siphon off a little juice from your geothermal rods and pirate your cable.”
“Why live down here at all?”
“I don’t live live here. I crash here occasionally. When things get hot. I just pulled a pretty big job and needed to hide out for a while.”
Artemis looked around. “A pretty big job, you say? So where’s all the loot?”
Mulch wagged a finger that glowed like a party stick. “That, as my cousin Nord would say, is where my improvised lie falls apart.”
Artemis put two and two together and arrived at a very unpleasant four.
“You were here to rob me!”
“No, I wasn’t. How dare you?!”
“You are lurking down here to tunnel into Fowl Manor. Again.”
“Lurking is not a nice word. Makes me sound like a sea serpent. I like to think I was hiding in the shadows. Cool, like a cat burglar.”
“You eat cats, Mulch.”
Mulch joined his hands. “Okay. I admit it. I might have been planning to have a peek into the art vault. But look at the funny side. Stealing stuff from a criminal mastermind. That’s gotta be ironic. You brainiacs like irony, right?”
Artemis was appalled. “You can’t keep art here. It’s damp and muddy.”
“Didn’t do the pharaohs any harm,” argued the dwarf.
Holly, who lay on the ground beside them, opened her eyes, coughed, then executed a move that was much more difficult than it looked by actually springing vertically from where she lay and landing on her feet. Mulch was impressed until Holly attempted to strangle him with his own beard, at which point he stopped being impressed and got busy choking.
This was a problem with waking up after a magical healing: often the brain is totally unharmed, but the mind is confused. It is a strange feeling to be smart and dopey at the same time. Add a time lapse into the mix, and a person will often find it difficult to transition from a dream state to the waking world, so it is advisable to place the patient in tranquil surroundings, perhaps with some childhood toys heaped around the pillow. Unfortunately for Holly, she had lost consciousness in the middle of a life-or-death struggle and awoke to find a glowing monster looming over her. So, she understandably overreacted.
It took about five seconds before she realized who Mulch was.
“Oh,” she mumbled sheepishly. “It’s you.”
“Yes,” said Mulch, then coughed up something that squeaked and crawled away. “If you could please relinquish the beard—I just had a salon conditioning treatment done.”
“Really?”
“Of course not really. I live in a cavern. I eat dirt. What do you think?”
Holly finger-combed Mulch’s beard a little, then climbed down from the dwarf’s shoulders.
“I was just sitting in spit, right?” she said, grimacing.
“It’s not all spit,” said Artemis.
“Well, Artemis,” she said, rubbing the faint red mark on her forehead, “what’s the plan?”
“And hello to you, too,” said Mulch. “And don’t thank me. Saving your life once more has been my pleasure. Just one of the many services offered by Diggums Airlines.”
Holly scowled at him. “I have a warrant out for you.”
“So why don’t you arrest me, then?”
“The secure facilities aren’t really operating at the moment.”
Mulch took a moment to process this, and the trademark bravado drained from his craggy features, crease by crease. It almost seemed like his glow dimmed a few notches.
“Oh, holy lord Vortex,” he said, tracing the sacred sign of the bloated intestine over his stomach to ward off evil. “What has Opal done now?”
Holly sat on a mound, tapping her wrist computer to see if anything worked.
“She’s found and opened the Berserker Gate.”
“And that’s not the worst thing,” said Artemis. “She killed her younger self, which destroyed everything Opal has invented or influenced since then. Haven is shut down, and humans are back in the Stone Age.”
Holly’s face was grim in the glow of luminous spit. “Actually, Artemis, finding the Berserker Gate is the worst thing, because there are two locks. The first releases the Berserkers…”
Mulch jumped into the pause. “And the second? Come on, Holly, this is no time for theatrics.”
Holly hugged her knees like a lost child. “The second releases Armageddon. If Opal succeeds in opening it, every single human on the surface of the earth will be killed.”
Artemis felt his head spin as the bloody scale of Opal’s plan became clear.