Class Dis-Mythed

Chapter Twenty-Six

"And now," Schlein boomed, "the final team elimination! And, folks, we've seen plenty of teams eliminated down to the last player, right here! Yes, indeed, it's the Monster Monster Challenge!"

"Congrats to both of you," the Geek said. We had landed on the main floor. Bee was still pale from his ordeal, but he looked okay. I didn't want to have to call for a doctor, not when the group was so close to achieving its goal. Incredible danger still lay ahead. On the way down, Bunny had regaled me with a list of monsters that the teams had faced in this contest before. It read like a Who's Who in Killing and Dismemberment. The Geek was pulled aside to review a list one of the Sittacomedian girls had on her clipboard.

"Hey, babe," Crasmer said, leering at Pologne. "Why are you hanging around with lowlifes like that Klahd? You ought to come over to our team. We're the winners. Not second-rate species like those."

Pologne snarled at him. "Are you insulting my friends, you ugly creature?" She raised a manicured set of talons and beckoned dangerously. "Come on over here and say that again!"

"Now, now," I said, getting in between them. "Nice job you did on the last round," I congratulated the Pervish champion. I gave him a hearty slap on the back with a solid magikal kicker. It knocked him stumbling. I grinned at my students, hoping none of them could penetrate my disguise. "Good luck to all of you in the final round."

"Thanks," Crasmer said.

I turned to the Sorcerer's Apprentices. "That was heroic of you, kid," I said, slapping Bee on the back in turn. "It ain't every demon who can face a bowl of Pervish food and live."

"Well, it wasn't the first time," Bee admitted. "Master S— my last teacher got me to try it."

"Like it?"

"Not a chance! No offense, sir!"

Apparently the name of Skeeve was not to be said out loud in this venue. I was amused.

Jinetta shot me a conspiratorial wink. "His teacher had us try a lot of things we would never have done before."

"Like teaming up," Melvine put in. "I'm not much for running with packs, but these kids have gotten to be my best friends."

"We put up with him," Pologne said. The two of them made faces at each other, but I could tell it was affectionate banter. I hoped Markie could see it from wherever she was watching. Maybe I had launched M.Y.T.H., Inc., Mark II.

Tolk leaned against Freezia, who was idly scratching his ears. The Canidian perked up suddenly, and came ambling over on all fours to sniff my wrist up and down.

"Hey, cut that out!" I roared.

"Sure sure sure," Tolk said, retreating. Instead of the suspicious expression he had worn before, he had a silly grin on his face.

"Oops," Bunny said.

"I better get out of here before Bee does Dispell on me," I whispered to her. I turned to the contestants. "Good luck to you all, and may the best team win."

We hurried back to the bubble.

The Geek did his round of handshakes then joined us.

"Now, we're gonna see some action," he said, rubbing his hands together. "We hire one of the local supermodels for this part."

A very slim, very tall Pervect female in a tight, pale yellow evening dress sashayed out of the darkness carrying a ceramic box that rattled as she walked. Wild whistling erupted.

"Now, calm down, gentlemen," Schlein instructed the audience, coming over to offer an elbow to the young lady. He escorted her to a fancy carved table. "It's time to draw lots then meet your monster!"

A hulking Pervect male came forward.

"Brucel will draw for the All-Pervects."

After a hasty conference, Tolk was urged up to the table.

"And Tolk for the Sorcerer's Apprentices."

I folded my arms to wait for the results. The Geek took my action as a criticism. He ran a finger around inside his collar.

"Aahz, I want you to know this is fair. It's entirely fair, I promise! I can't help it if the monsters are killers! It's all part of the game."

"Yeah, yeah." I steeled myself. This was my own doing. I had demanded a fair competition, and to make it fair, I had to stay out of it. This might be the hardest thing I had ever done. Whatever happened, I had prepared my students as well as I could, considering their inexperience, and I had ensured that they had an honest chance. They wanted to do this. They had come here willingly to be part of Sink or Swim, and they had earned the opportunity to go all the way. I couldn't do a thing without calling a halt to the entire proceedings. I looked down at my apprentices sadly. "I know."

Brucel stuck a hand into the box and came up with a marble.

"The All-Pervects have chosen orange!"

"Oooooh," breathed the audience.

Tolk planted one flat paw over his eyes and shoved the other into the lottery box. He handed the marble off to Schlein without looking at it.

"The Sorcerer's Apprentices have chosen purple!"

"Aaaaah," the audience responded.

"We'll be back in a moment, after this word from Duzzido, the detergent that can get any stain out of your finest clothing! Duzzido it? You bet it does!"

The stage went black for thirty very long seconds.

"Welcome our final two teams!" Schlein announced as the lights came up again. "First, the home team, those guys and gals in green—the All-Pervects! Yes, here they are, Pervect in every way! Welcome your home team!"

The All-Pervects, whittled down to five members by the preceding rounds, stepped into the spotlight from the right. They had on fresh jumpsuits of pale green that contrasted well with their complexions, but did not conceal the bandages around a wrist here, an ear there. They looked grimly determined.

"And the challengers!"

"Booo!"

I glanced down. The audience was actually cheering and waving its arms, but the sound that reached me was disapproval. The Geek shrugged.

"People like to have bad guys and good guys, Aahz. It's nothing personal. If, and it's a big if, they make it to the final round, we'll reverse the audience reaction. You'll see."

"Welcome the Sorcerer's Apprentices!"

I could see that my students were unnerved by the catcalls and hoots from the audience, but they stepped up bravely. They wore jumpsuits like the All-Pervects, but in a rainbow of different colors, none of which was green.

"Can't tell the players without distinguishing marks," the Geek explained.

"Except for the fact that one team is nothing but Pervects."

"Well, there's three on the other team. That made it okay with 29% of the focus group we're running if the Sorcerer's Apprentices should possibly manage to pull off a win. Honestly, Aahz, it's not likely."

"Yeah," I said shortly. "I knew that."

"You won't do anything rash to me if something goes wrong, will you?"

I looked at Bunny. She shook her head.

"No. Of course not."

"Well, it's never 'of course' with you, Aahz," the Geek said. "I just want your assurance, that's all. Can I offer you a side bet on the outcome?"

"NO!"

I turned my back on him.

There were two paths marked on the floor that led in opposite directions, one purple and one orange. From my vantage point, and from the views provided by a dozen crystal balls arrayed about the Geek's bubble, I had a view of a roofless, hatbox-shaped building. The paths led to diametrically opposing points that each led into a maze which took up half of the hatbox. Each maze was beautifully designed, with marble statues and pillars, tinkling fountains and potted plants for decoration. In the center, where the mazes met, was a set of double doors. Before them rose a pedamented pillar on which sat an ornate golden key, of the hefty variety chatelaines used to rap the knuckles of lazy servants.

"That's the door to the Chamber of Success," Bunny explained. "The team that gets there first has to go through to win. There are traps and deadfalls in the maze, and the walls move around to confuse the teams."

I nodded. I was much more concerned with a sealed chamber the shape of a drum in the center of each maze. Fire and smoke issued from carved openings in the walls of the drum in the orange sector. Cascades of hot sparks flew out of the sealed room in the purple sector. Both concealed monsters were roaring and banging around inside their prisons. The very walls shook.

The teams entered the maze. I could follow all of the action easily, in one or more of the crystal balls in the Geek's floating office. The All-Pervects went into their half like an army infiltrating enemy territory. One of them went first while the others covered him from the entrance. As soon as he signaled that he was safe, the others followed one at a time.

"Hup! Hup, hup, hup!" they chanted.

So, they'd practiced before they came on the show, too. No team was as inexperienced as the oath of amateur status would lead one to believe. They were simply unpaid. I grinned to myself.

The point man trotted down the first corridor. He reached the corner and paused, waiting for his companions. When they had all reached his location, he set out again, only to disappear from sight.

"Ayieeeee!"

"Deadfall," the Geek said. "You warn them and warn them and warn them, and they still all fall into the first one. I just won a thousand gold pieces on that. Sucker bet."

The Pervect's friends hauled him out. They felt their way along more cautiously, refusing to trust the floor unless they tested it first.

The Geek's engineers had a surprise around the next corner for those who used a toe instead of magik to try out the floor. A female Pervect, in her first turn on point, prodded a tile with a cautious foot. She looked up at the sudden whistling noise above her head. A gigantic weight flattened her to the ground. The others yanked her out from underneath it and propped her up against the wall. She looked winded and bruised. The team leader spoke to her in a low voice. She waved them away. They hup-hup-hupped onward.

I turned my attention to my students. They, too, had approached the maze with caution. Pologne, the research expert, was talking, probably giving them statistics on which way to turn at each crossroads. Bee kept track of the direction they were going, navigating by the stars overhead. Melvine was at the head of the group. The deadfall took him by surprise, but his reactions were quicker than the Pervect's had been. He only dropped a foot before he caught himself and hovered over the empty square.

"Nyah, nyah, nyah," he shouted, thumbing his nose at the sky. "Is that the best you can do?"

"Boy, that kid has attitude," the Geek said, looking pleased. "The crystals caught that. Great stuff!"

"Not that way," Bunny shrieked as the team turned right. That path led through a narrow gap in shrubbery to a dead end. As the students turned back, the plants reached out thorny tendrils to grab them.

"And the Sorcerer's Apprentices have found the Throtde Vines," Schlein announced. "Will they choke, or will they get past them?"

I was distracted at that moment by a loud roar. The All-Pervects had reached the big chamber in the middle of their maze where the monster waited. The huge container rocked wildly.

Bang!

The top flew off, and a twenty-foot-long red dragon crawled out of the box, hissing and tossing its head. It spotted the Pervects, and issued a stream of fire. The Pervects backed up into the nearest niche to confer. I saw them pretending to pound something, or throttling imaginary necks as they ran over their options.

A cloud of leaves blew upward from the left half of the building. My students jogged out of the dead end, unwinding pieces of vine from their limbs. They had escaped from the Throttle Vines, and were just a few paces behind their opponents in reaching the monster's chamber in their own maze. As soon as one of them set foot in the room, lightning began to shoot out through the container's walls, smashing the urns and statuary arrayed about the walls of the small enclosure. Melvine and Pologne flew upward. The rest retreated around the nearest wall.

"Make that louder," I said, pointing at the image. "I want to hear what they're saying!"

"Is that a weather elemental?" Pologne asked Melvine as they lit down near the others.

"How should I know?" he asked. "Do you want me to go and knock on the door?"

"That sounds like a really good idea," the Pervect snarled back. "There are only a thousand dimensions inhabited by lightning-spitters. Think you can get home town and date of birth, too?"

"You're the researcher—you ask it!"

"Now, stop it, you two," Jinetta said, pushing them apart. "We need to go through that room. We haven't much time."

"Jinetta, it's breaking out," Bee said. He had been keeping an eye on the room. They all peered around the edge of the doorway. A huge catlike backside reared up out of the ruins of the container, topped by a translucent, jointed tail with a stinger. The tail plunged down and stabbed the floor, then it reared up.

ZAP!

A lightning bolt shot out of the creature's backside. It went out the door, narrowly missing the team, and impacted on the far wall, destroying the bas relief of a shepherd and some kind of woolly ruminant native to Perv.

"A Manticore!" Freezia shouted. "It's a Manticore! Oh, no!"

"All right," Jinetta said, patting the air with her hands. "We know how to deal with one. We've done it before. Everyone calm down. Stay away from its tail. Don't let it grab you in those paws. The jaws are strong, too. Freezia, are you ready to levitate? Together we might be able to lift it."

Freezia felt the air.

"The lightning's sapped the magik!" she cried. "I've only got about half of what I stored when we started."

"I'm full," Bee said. "I used magik to Cantrip over that moving floor section, but I replenished my store as soon as I did it."

"So did I," Tolk said.

"I had to use some not to fall when the trapdoor opened up," Melvine said. "And flying takes up some energy."

"That's only three of us with enough magik," Jinetta said. "Well, then, perhaps we can capture it."

"Do you see a gum-gorse tree anywhere?" Melvine asked, baring his teeth. "We're toast!"

"We don't have to make it adhere to anything," Jinetta said, remaining amazingly calm. "All we have to do is get past it. We have proven that they are easy to confuse."

"When they're drunk," Bee reminded her. "This monster's sober as a judge."

"Even after Tolk cured Evad's headache he remained slower in the uptake than we are," Jinetta countered. "We will keep his senses busy until all of us, or at least one, can pass him and get through the rest of the maze. Only one of us needs to secure the key to win!"

"Good idea," Melvine said. "What do you want us to do?"

"Ready one of your tornadoes," Jinetta instructed. "It won't matter if you have any force left after that. Freezia, use your retrieval spell to pull its tail to one side. We don't want it aiming lightning at any of us. Tolk, you're good at dodging. Keep it busy."

"What about me?" Bee asked.

"I have an idea: can you reverse your Cantrip spell to make someone clumsy?"

Bee grinned. "I never needed it before," he said. "I was always clumsy enough on my own. But I'll try."

"Ready?" Jinetta asked, holding out her hand. The others piled theirs on hers, palms down. "Break!"

The team crept over the threshold. There must have been an alarm in the floor, because the Manticore, or rather its back half, redoubled its efforts, shooting lightning bolts and jabbing around with its spike. The students had to dash to get behind chunks of fallen marble. Melvine started twirling his finger in a circle. A tiny cyclone appeared on his palm. I was impressed how much the spell had been refined over the last several weeks. He tossed it up and down as if it was a coin, and sauntered out into the center of the room.

"Hey, Manticore," Melvine taunted. "Your mother stings her own butt! The city dump called. Your new face is ready. Hey, I hear your application for village idiot was accepted."

At the sound of his voice, the Manticore's head went up and his tail went down. He spun in a circle, his lion face the very picture of joy. I noted that he had pale whiskers, one of which was bent.

"Cupy!" shouted the Manticore.

"Evad?" Melvine exclaimed, breaking out in a huge grin. He threw the mini-tornado over his shoulder, where it sputtered into nothingness. "No way!"

The huge being came loping over to seize Melvine in a big hug and roll over with him in its paws. "Oh, Cupy, good see you!"

"Evad!" The rest of the Sorcerer's Apprentices recognized the Manticore that we had extracted from the town of Humulus. They rushed over to pet and hug him. I found myself grinning like a complete idiot. The contest was in the bag now.

"Evad?" the Geek echoed, rising to his feet in outrage. "They KNOW my Manticore? I'm going to call a halt to this contest. This isn't fair!" He started to lower the bubble. "We'll start over with new monsters."

I put my hand on his shoulder and shoved him down.

"Who says it isn't fair?" I demanded. "Do you think we live in a vacuum? The chances that a couple of demons might have met in the past is unlikely, sure, given the number of beings in the universe, but are you going to penalize them because it happened?

"And lose all that money? The audience wants a fight, Aahz, a fight! I'm going to throw a Minotaur in there. Maybe a Giant Squid, too. That'll up the ante for the outcome!"

"So, it's money, huh?" I snarled. "You do have bets against the Sorcerer's Apprentices."

The Geek backed away, his hands up in surrender. "Easy, easy, Aahz! If I didn't know better I'd think that you're the sorcerer they're talking about, except the last time I saw you you didn't have any magik."

"Things change," I gritted out, "but they never had Aahz for a teacher. That I guarantee. They'd have been a different group if they ever did."

"But what about the contest?" the Geek pleaded. "If the audience doesn't see a little blood, they'll riot!"

I glanced over at the Pervect side. There was plenty of blood. The team had managed to roll the dragon over on his back. Two of the All-Pervects were binding its legs with magik, but it kept kicking free. I blamed the Manticore's lightning for draining the force lines. They almost had it, though.

"They still have to get to the key first, right?"

"Right, Aahz," the Geek said, his face hopeful. "Is there any way you'll let me—slow them down a little?"

He didn't have to. The Manticore was so happy to meet his friends again that he kept pulling them back into the room as they tried to leave.

"…And when got back from shore leave, escort mission to tropics. Very nice! Hot! Perfumey! You would like! Ever want to come?"

"Maybe some day," Jinetta said, "but Evad, we have to get—" She sidled toward the opposite door, but he enveloped her with a friendly paw.

"And Klahd Skeeve give good idea, sell venom. Visiting wizard very interested! Start sideline with friends. Have money for drinks all around. So, last week, Captain says special mission. Good publicity for Navy! Volunteer? I say me! Here I am. And here is you!"

"That's great that you found a use for your talent," Bee assured him. "We're happy to see you, but we've got to go."

"No go! I buy drinks. Skeeve kind. Where Skeeve?"

"Skeeve's not here," Tolk assured him. "Just us. We're happy to see you, too!"

Doubtfully, Evad sniffed, his big furry nose twitching. "Smell Skeeve. Where Skeeve?"

"No, he's not here. Really really really."

"Let's get organized here," Jinetta said. "Evad, we're very glad you are safe, but we need to make it through this maze before the other team does!"

A frustrated roar from the other side of the wall made Evad raise his eyebrows. "What that?"

"Other team," Freezia said. She dropped into another language that consisted of growls and hisses. She must have gotten interested in Manticore after our previous encounter and taken the time to learn some. "We're in a competition. We have to get to the middle of this maze and secure a golden key before they do or we lose!"

"You not lose!" Evad declared. "I carry! Which way?"

It was going to be a close contest. The All-Pervects had succeeded in hog-tying the dragon, which lay on the floor, flaming everything within sight. With only a few injuries and no fatalities, the Pervects managed to flee the room and headed off into the second half of the maze.

The Pervects and Bee clung to the broad, furry back. Tolk led them out the door.

"Watch it watch it watch it!" the Canidian said over his shoulder. "Sometimes the floor falls out from under you!"

"That way," Pologne said, pointing right.

The All-Pervects turned left.

"Go left!" The Sorcerer's Apprentices reached a T-in-tersection. Melvine flew upward to look out at the top of the maze. At the lip, he flattened out like a bird smacking into a window.

"Magikal force field," the Geek explained. "They all try to do that."

"Can't get out to see!" Melvine yelled.

"Oh, I wish I had my detector," Pologne said. "I hate not being able to use technology! We'll go right again." The Manticore galloped forward, only to have to back out of a narrow spot that led to a blank wall. Pologne cried out in frustration.

"All right, it must be three rights and two lefts! Left again! Now!"

The All-Pervects cleared their last right turn and let out a cheer at the sight of the pillar. They were moving quickly. I could see victory written on their faces.

Suddenly, the Sorcerer's Apprentices burst into view, riding on the back of a full-grown Manticore. The furry beast galloped into the circular chamber just a pace ahead of the home team. The beast swung wide, depositing its passengers onto the floor near the wall.

Determined, the Pervects poured on extra speed, heading for the pillar. Crasmer, at the lead, was just about to take the key off the pillar when a canine head ducked under his hand, seized the golden object in his mouth and gave them a friendly smile.

"Sorry sorry sorry," Tolk said. "I believe that's ours."