Zurfina stepped away from the vehicle and Saba pulled away from the curb, stopping at the corner to check for oncoming traffic.  There were no other steam carriages on Bainbridge Clark Street, so he started to pull forward.  A sudden movement on his left prompted him to pull on the brake, and two massive creatures ran past, barely missing the front end of his car.  Two three ton iguanodons raced side by side north up the street, their relatively small front legs tucked in close as they relied on their large back legs to sprint at more than twenty five miles an hour.  They bumped into one another as they ran, and one huge tail smacked a small tree in a planter on the sidewalk, knocking it over.  Saba stood up from his seat.  It was only then that he saw the two dinosaurs had humans riding on their backs.

Sitting back down and releasing the break, Saba stamped his foot down on the forward accelerator and turned north, following the stampeding beasts.  The toppled tree was not the only damage left in their wake.  A lamppost had been bent.  Hopefully there was no gas leak.  A small flowerbed in the median had been trampled.  The speeding vehicle was faster than the running dinosaurs though and as the monsters reached First Avenue, he was right on their tails.  He pressed the horn producing an ah-oogah.

“Rein those animals in!” he shouted.

The dinosaurs did in fact have reins, though not bits and bridles as a horse would have had.  Never-the-less, the riders brought them to a quick halt.  Saba took the carriage out of gear and threw on the brake, then jumped down and ran forward.  He was careful to stay out of the way of the stamping feet and waving tails of the panting brutes.  On the back of the first dinosaur sat one of the Charmley twins, Saba couldn’t tell if it was Walter or Warden.  On the other dinosaur was Graham Dokkins.

“What the hell is this?” shouted Saba.

“Great, isn’t it?” said Graham, sliding down the iguanodon’s side to the ground.  “I invented the bridle myself.  Stinky is already used to it, but Molly’s still a bit testy.”

“You battered a lamppost!”

Graham looked off to the south.  “I didn’t hear an explosion.”

“Lucky
for you.”  Saba looked up at the Charmley boy.  “Get down here.”

“Come on Saba,” said Graham.

“Don’t you ‘come on’ me.  You’re under arrest.  How’s that?”

“There’s no law against riding a dinosaur in town.”

“Really?  Are you sure about that?”

“Yep.”

“How about destruction of public property?  How about contributing to the delinquency of a minor?”

“How about police brutality?” countered Graham.

“Oh, I’ll show you brutality.  Somebody could have been trampled to death.”

“We picked a quiet street,” said the boy.

“You keep your trap shut, Walter.”

“I’m Warden.”

“I don’t care which one you are.  Wait till I tell your mother.”

The boy’s face whitened.

“Your mother has long since given you up for a delinquent,” Saba told Graham.  “But I don’t think she would want to see you in jail.  It’s out of concern for her that I’m not running you in.  But you’re going to pay for any damage done.”

“Fine,” said Graham, unrepentant.

“Too right,” said Saba.  “Now walk these animals home.”

“I’m taking my animals home,” said Graham.  “But I’m going to speak to the City Council.  I’m going to get official permission to ride a dinosaur in town, and then you won’t have a thing to say.”

Graham turned around and collected the loose reins from his dinosaur and the one that Warden had been riding.  Then he led them around Saba and his steam carriage and down the street.  The two dinosaurs trotted along behind him as well-behaved as any domesticated beasts.  Warden looked at Saba for a moment, and then followed.  Saba walked forty feet up the road to the police call box that stood on its own shoulder-high post.  He pulled out his constable key and opened the red door, then began tapping the telegraph plunger inside, sending a message back to the station to inform them of the damaged street lamp.

“Trouble?” asked Femke Kane.  She and her husband, Croffut, and Werthimer had crossed from the far side of the courtyard.

“You could say,” replied Bratihn.  “Where’s Brown?”

“We didn’t see him come out,” replied Croffut.

“Bugger and Blast!”

“It’s not your fault,” said Senta.  “You told us all how to find our way out.”

“He was frightened out of his wits,” said Vever.  “And I don’t blame him.  I was too.”

“I had better go find him,” said Bratihn.

“I’ll go with you,” said Senta.

“So will I,” added Croffut.

“Good.  That’s enough.  I don’t want to lose anyone else down there.  The rest of you, do what you can for Mr. Vever.  He has a broken arm and I don’t know what else.”

“We’ll take care of him,” said Werthimer, just as a particularly loud cry echoed from the Unterirdisches Esser somewhere below.

The reverberating cries continued as the young sorceress and the two former soldiers went back down into the narrow chamber, following the path the party had taken before.

“There are two possibilities,” said Bratihn, when they had reached the intersecting hallway.  “Either Brown made it all the way to this point and just continued on, in which case I figure he’ll end up somewhere out in front of the fortress, or he got mixed up at the intersection up ahead.  So we’ll try the left branch there first.  If we don’t find anything, we’ll try the center branch.”

The others nodded their agreement.

From the tee junction the left branch of the corridor stretched out into the darkness well over three hundred feet before it ended with stairs dropping down.  The three descended.  Senta counted eighty seven steps before losing her place, but she later thought that this must have only been about halfway to the bottom.

“I hope we don’t have to run back up these,” said Croffut.

As if his words were a signal, the roaring monster in the distance behind them suddenly became quiet.

“I don’t know which is worse,” remarked Bratihn.  “Hearing that abomination, or knowing he’s there and not hearing.”

“The latter,” Senta decided.

At the bottom of the steps, the hallway continued its course for another fifty feet and then ended at another open doorway.  Bratihn leaned in and held up the lantern.

“Can you cast another of those really bright spells?” he asked.

“I need to cast it on something I can see.”

“If you look up there you can see something just sticking down—maybe a stalactite.”

Senta looked up and did see something just reaching down from the very high ceiling above, into the dim light of the lantern.  She aimed her spell at it.

“Regnum uuthanum riyah.”

A ball of light exploded into existence revealing a square fifty by fifty foot room.  The object to which the magic light was attached was not a stalactite, but a tube growing from the ceiling.  It looked as though it had been crafted of mud.  As they examined it, out from the end dropped a spider, its body the size of human head, quickly descending on a thin strand of silk.  Bratihn pulled his rifle to his shoulder and shot it.  A good portion of its guts sprayed out the other side and it curled into a ball.  Then the spider dropped from its webbing and fell to the bottom of the chamber, making a splash in dark water which they could now see reached to all four corners of the room.  It was impossible to tell how deep it was.  Though the dead arachnid sank, it reappeared on the surface a second later.

“I really don’t want to try to wade across,” said Croffut.

“No you don’t,” said Senta.  “There is something down there that isn’t right.  I can feel it.”

“We’re not going to wade across it,” replied Bratihn.  “If Brown did, then he’s a damn fool.  Kafira only knows how deep this is or what it is that’s causing you to feel that way.  I’ve seen enough to take you as an authority.”

“Say there Senta,” said Vever catching up to the other two.  “Is it magic that you’re not exhausted like I am?”

“Yes, it’s magic,” replied Staff.  “It’s the magic of youth.  She has twice the energy that either of us has and half as much idea what to do with it.”

“It’s a shame,” said Vever, though he didn’t complete the proverb.  “That youth is wasted on the young.”

“Would you like me to carry your pack for a while, Mr. Vever?” asked Senta.

“I would never allow a young lady…”

She patted Vever, who was a foot shorter than she was, twice on the top of his head and then grabbed the pack by one of the loops on the back and lifted it off his shoulders.  Pointing downward and swirling around her index finger, she said “Uuthanum Izesic.”  She tossed the backpack into the air just above where she had pointed, and it plopped onto an invisible surface, three feet above the ground.  Senta smiled and continued on, following Croffut who was none the wiser.  The backpack and whatever transparent thing supported it, followed five feet behind her.

Staff and Vever stopped walking and wondered at the hovering object.  As they stood thus amazed, Paxton Brown rushed past them.  Catching up with the invisible transport, he flung his own pack on top of Vever’s.  Now both haversacks followed along in the air behind the girl.

“Do you think I could..?” asked Buttermore, puffing up beside them.

Staff turned to see that the entire column, besides Senta, Croffut, and Brown were bunched up around him.  He shrugged.  They hurried to catch up to the sorceress and one by one began placing their backpacks on what Staff began to think of as the invisible wagon.  By trial, they eventually determined that it was a disk about three feet in diameter.  They were only able to get seven packs to stay on it, and then only by balancing them one on the other in a three story pyramid.  In the end, they were so distracted by the game that they scarcely noticed the miles that had passed, and even Brown’s complaining had ceased.

An angry screech brought their attention back to their surroundings.  Hopping down the sloping landscape from their right was a pack of frightening beasts.  Staff didn’t quite know whether most of the animals in Mallon belonged in the dinosaur family or the bird family, and these did little to unmuddy the question.  They were fifteen to twenty feet long, slightly larger than the utahraptors seen near Port Dechantagne.  From their shoulders back, they were covered with brilliant crimson feathers with a dash of black on the tufts of their tails.  Their heads were feathered in black.  They had large lizard-like mouths filled with knife-like teeth.  Eight of the creatures ran, in little fits and starts, toward the line of humans.

The stock of Staff’s rifle was at his shoulder before he realized he had slipped it over his arm.  He aimed at the first creature’s head and fired.  The thirty caliber bullet exploded out the back of its skull.  The spent cartridge clanged onto a large rock at his feet and he targeted a second charging animal.  But the first one didn’t fall down.  It kept running, going right past him and continuing down the slope for several hundred more feet, its legs no longer directed by its brain, but continuing to kick anyway.  His second target he shot twice, once in the neck and once in the chest.  He heard a couple of shots fired by the others, but by this time the entire pack was upon them.

Staff didn’t let the sounds of battle distract him.  He fired quickly at a third and fourth beast.  He heard Vever’s voice shouting over the others and he heard Brown screaming.  The crack of rifle fire was suddenly overpowered by an even louder crack as a tremendous bolt of lightning shot horizontally across the hillside.  Staff fired one more time, but the crimson-plumed monster in his sights was already dead—killed by the lightning.  Looking around he saw it was the last one.

“Surgeon!” yelled Werthimer, out of habit, as he jumped toward the prone form of Mr. Brown.

Staff picked his way through the large feathered bodies to where the man lay.  A quick examination revealed however that he was unharmed.  He had apparently fainted from sheer terror.  The only one injured was Manring, who had dived out of the way of the vicious claws, but not quite quickly enough, and had sustained a horrible gash across his forearm.  Staff quickly drew a healing draught from his pack and poured half of the contents of the small brown bottle onto the cut and had Manring drink the remaining potion.  Within seconds the bleeding had stopped and the injury had already begun to heal.

“Thank heavens for magic,” said Mr. Vever.

“Yes,” agreed Staff, then turning to look at Senta.  “I assume that was your magical lightning?”

The girl nodded.

“These are beautiful,” said Femke Kane, holding up a long black tail feather.  “Perhaps we should take some to present to the lizzies in Tsahloose.”

“Alright,” replied Staff.  “We earned them I suppose.”