Shadowcast

Entrance Exam: Part 6

Liza and Wren came to an opening in the trees where the main temple stood in all its ruined, derelict grandeur. Patches of grayed moss and golden grass clung to the temple like fur on a mange-ridden dog. "Hmm. Nice and homey."

Wren cocked his head to the side. "Looks like free real estate."

To Liza's disappointment, there were no other students in the clearing. "There's no one here!"

"Shh!" Wren clapped a hand over Liza's mouth. He pointed to a sleeping dragon the size of a frontier wagon.

"Oh..." Liza whispered, "I didn't see that." The slumbering dragon perked up when it heard her. It turned its feathered body around and stomped across the temple grounds toward them.

Wren pulled at Liza's shawl. "Run!" The two of them broke into a sprint. Liza only got a couple steps before her injured leg buckled beneath her. She did pull something. The wyvern barreled toward her at an alarming speed. At the last second before its jaws clamped down on her, she felt a hand curl around her neck. A sudden feeling of dizziness took her. When her head stopped spinning, she looked up and saw a grayish-skinned girl with soft features and cute fluffy ears close a circle of whirling green sparks. A beanpole of a dark elf stood next to her, tossing crossbow bolts into an inscrutable contraption of metal and wood.

"Are you hurt?" asked the wolf-girl, pressing her wrapped hands on different parts of Liza's leg.

"Yes, but I think that dragon's a bigger issue right now."

"The wyvern?" snipped the dark elf, "That's the least of our worries. Cover your ears!" He locked a carved bolt into the top of his crossbow device and pulled the trigger. There was a moment of absolute silence as the bolt arced across the clearing toward the dragon. Then, an ear-splitting crack rang out through the whole valley. A shockwave rippled through its scaled belly. The embedded bolt tore the wyvern apart from the inside. Dragon innards splattered the wizards.

Liza wiped the viscera off her face. She looked up at the two strangers. This was a terrible first impression, but she couldn't make it any worse.

"I'm Liza," she said bluntly, "I'd shake your hands, but mine are a little... messy."

"W-Wendy."

"I'm Alusius."

Wendy and Alusius used that fancy spell Wren used to clean himself, and the guts sloughed off them.

"Wendy, Lucius," Liza said, pointing finger guns at the other two in an attempt to make her current goop-covered situation a little less awkward, "Friends, wizards, countryfolk. Any of you got a cleaning spell left over for little ol' me?"

"I'm a bit occupied right now," said Alusius, flipping through his spellbook, "Just clean yourself. Everyone knows that spell."

"I... don't."

Alusius's frantic page-flipping slowed to a stop. His head turned to Liza. "What magic do you know?"

"I learned magic a bit differently," Liza said. She covertly reached a hand into her pocket and grabbed a piece of spell paper. She crumbled it into a ball and raised her hand with a flourish. A ball of flame appeared in her hand.

Alusius's eyes narrowed. "Who did you learn from?"

"I'm self-taught."

"Where is your spellbook?"

"I lost it at home."

"Where is your home?"

"Darkwood."

"Where is that?"

Wendy tried to interject. "Uh, guys-"

"It's in another country. Why does it matter?"

"Your story is positively porous." Alusius bore down on Liza, his cold eyes striking fear into her heart. "I demand to know who you are and why you are trying to infiltrate Sigilspear University."

Liza sensed herself shrinking inward. She couldn't let that happen. She was supposed to be confident. "That's a long story," Liza said, puffing out her chest, "I'll-"

"Perfectly acceptable," Alusius shot back, "I'm more than willing to listen, and we have all the time in the world."

"No we don't!" Wendy shouted, her tone far too forceful for her adorable voice, "Alusius, remember what we saw in that temple. We don't have much time!"

"What?" Liza whipped her head back and forth between the drow, the wolf girl, and Wren, who had just shown up. "Hey, Wren. What's up?"

"Good," Wren said with a wink.

"That's, uh, that's not-" Liza was about to correct him when the ground beneath them began to shake and shudder. Ancient mortar between the bricks flexed and pulsed like muscle. Soil around the temple broke as subterranean chambers and tunnels raised up and became a pair of legs. The main terraced pyramid toppled over and rearranged itself into a torso. The stone pathway to the temple emerged and reared back with the rest of the bricks, coming to rest on its shoulders. As it rose, Liza caught a glimpse of a glimmering blue fissure on the back of its neck. A stone foot came down on the messy corpse of the wyvern, flattening it with a gruesome crunch. The pathway opened its stone eyelids and scowled down at the group with ghostly white eyes. The newly awoken golem opened and closed its rocky fists, breaking off centuries of dirt.

"Holy golemoly, that's awesome!" Liza shouted, "Which one of you did that?" Wren, Wendy, and Alusius shook their heads. "That's not ours?"

"N-no, Wendy said.

"Well, heck."

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Author's Note:

This golem part is actually one of the first things I wrote in the first drafts of Shadowcast, back when it was set on Earth and Liza was a pop culture reference machine. I like to think my writing has improved since then.