The Magic School for the Utterly Hopeless (Completed/First Draft)

Chapter Eighteen

We breathe a sigh of relief the second we come out at the other end. The room is empty. There's no evil creature waiting to rip us apart. But there is one on the other side of the office door. I can hear it. I can hear a hoarse, gurgling grunt.

Scampering over, I peek through the door's keyhole.

It's a blue ogre. It's plodding slowly back and forth outside, and dragging a huge sword along the floor behind it. It's massive head is scraping the ceiling, sending flakes of paint showering down. And I can smell it too. It smells like rancid cheese mixed with dragon dung. Pee-yew. It's worse than the sewers so that's saying a lot.

'What is it?' Hank asks with a tremor.

'It's a blue ogre,' I reply.

They're called blue ogres because they're blue from head to toe. Even their hair and toenails are blue. They're also a lot scarier, meaner, faster, and more powerful than regular ogres.

'I didn't know there were different coloured ogres,' says Hank. 'I thought they were all green.'

Rolling her eyes, Rachel says, 'At least there's only one of them.'

That's good, right?

'Hey, Peni,' I ask, 'Where do we go now? Do you know?'

'Do I know? I know everything about the lord's castle,' Peni replies quietly but with pride. 'When I was younger my dad gave me a tour of the place, from the deep dungeons to the tallest tower where the Great Destroyer is right now. I even met the lord that day, too. I'm not kidding, I shook his hand and kissed his royal ring. That was a great time. I can remember it like it was yesterday. Ooh, and I also met the lordess.' Peni then whispers more softly. 'Don't say anything to anyone but I really didn't like her that much. She just kept going on and on and on about things. She went on about this portrait of her for hours. I'm not kidding. It was so annoying -- what?'

The rest of us are shaking our heads.

'Oh,' Peni continues, 'sorry. What was the question again?'

Was there a question? I seriously can't remember.

'Where do we go now?' asks Emily.

Oh, yeah, that was it.

'If we want to go up to the tallest tower, we need to go left outside,' Peni answers.

'Okay, everyone,' I say, 'on my cue, follow me and don't make a sound. But be ready for something to happen.'

I look through the keyhole again and watch the blue ogre. And the very second he passes the door, I hold up my hand and carefully open it. We then shuffle out, I close the door behind me, and we all head away from the beast.

Leading us, Peni takes us to a spiral staircase. And up we go until the stairs open out onto a brightly lit hallway. It's lined with statues of gargoyles.

I barely take a step off the stairs when Peni stops me, pulling me back.

I almost trip and go tumbling down.

Wouldn't that be something. To come all this way and have it all end by falling down some stairs.

'What was that for?' I say.

Peni puts a finger to his mouth before whispering, 'These gargoyles aren't supposed to be here.'

Say what?

'Well, unless the lord just recently added them, but my dad would've said something.'

I stare at the closest gargoyle and see its chest moving. It's breathing. I then look at the next and the next and the next. They're all breathing.

'They're all real,' I say softly.

'I'm not impressed,' gasps Rachel. 'And how are we gonna get past them without raising the alarm?'

'Wait a minute,' says Emily, knitting her eyebrows. 'I'm not so sure these are gargoyles. It's light in here and real gargoyles come to life when it's dark. These are the opposite of gargoyles. They're muethills. Muethills come to life in the light and turn to stone in the dark.'

'I didn't know that,' says Peni. 'Do you have a book about them or something? If you do, can I borrow it?'

Emily takes no notice of him.

And neither do I. 'So we need to turn the lights off in the hallway then?' I ask.

'Exactly,' Emily replies.

'We all know a spell for that, don't we?' says Rachel, nodding.

With each of us concentrating on a different light fixture, we cast the spell.

'Tormesa.'

And like that, the lights go out.

Seriously, this magic stuff is getting easy.

Then through the dark hallway we traipse, passing the now stone muethills.

It's still scary.

At the other end we come to a stone archway. And beyond that is a cavernous dining hall teeming with creatures that make us wriggle.