Jake's Quest - Wizards V by John Booth Read Free Book Online Page A

here.”
    “I got an urgent message.” I looked at Merlin. He was totally ignoring me and everybody else in the room.
    “You’ll be back for dinner?”
    “I promise.”
    Jenny hugged me and took the opportunity to whisper in my ear. “Go out the front door. I’ll make sure the twins aren’t looking.”
    I kissed her, wondering all the while how I’d managed to marry such a wonderful, clever, understanding woman.
    She was shouting at the twins as I made my way downstairs. Something about being responsible enough to know they couldn’t just leave whenever they wanted.
    As soon the front door clicked shut, I hopped to a place outside the Multiverse.
     
    There is a dimension called Hop Space that links the Multiverse together. It’s what wizards use to travel, though we rarely stay in it long enough to know it’s there. From Hop Space it is possible to jump outside the Multiverse a little way.
    There is a wound in the Multiverse caused when a dozen or so universes were crunched together into a destroyed mess. The wound extends the multiverse outwards to what remains of those universes, a ball of reality called the Damaged Zone that is shrinking as its magical energy is absorbed back into the Multiverse.
    The Diabli are trapped in the Damaged Zone. They have not perceived the wound and so they cannot use it to travel back to the Multiverse. That has not stopped them from trying to escape. They are incredibly powerful wizards, determined to survive and they are sending enormous blasts of energy at the surface of the Damaged Zone attempting to break out.
    There’s risk in going to look. Should they spot me they might learn how to escape. The Dragons believe the greater risk is not knowing what they are up to, which is why I was here. That and my son’s warning.
    I approached the skin of the Damaged Zone cautiously. The last time I had been here the Diabli were firing magic at the skin. The surface had been roiling for distances I could not fully comprehend.
    Everything was quiet. There was a haze above the boundary layer as magic left the Zone and flowed back to the Multiverse. The Dragons believed that as the zone shrank the magic inside was becoming denser despite the amount escaping and that eventually this denser magic would allow the Diabli to escape.
    The surface of the Damaged Zone was smooth and undisturbed. It was also immeasurably big, so it was only my spatial ability that allowed me to return to the spot where I had seen the Diabli. As there was nothing visible, I moved closer. There was nothing to hide behind. It was only my size relative to the vastness around that made me difficult to see. I was less than a grain of sand on a infinite shore.
    The surface of the zone is transparent to magical sight. That was how I had seen the Diabli last time. They were easy to spot in the eye of the storm of energies they were creating. Even though it was quiet now, I still remembered exactly where to look.
    They were still there. Looking like lizard humans from a comic book, three of them floated silently at the zone’s edge. But they were not alone. On the outside of the barrier were a cluster of other beings. They were difficult to see, as if they weren’t quite real. Their shapes shifted as I watched and I got the impression of black wings. I had seen something like them before. When a creature possessing an elf called Farolan had fled his body.
    Whatever I was seeing was not good news. It looked as if the Diabli had allies outside the Damaged Zone. I wasn’t sure if the smoke-like creatures were there to help the Diabli escape or were reporting back to them. I certainly wasn’t planning to get close enough to find out. It was time to get out before I was seen.
    Retreating to a safe distance, I prepared to move to hop space as the first step to getting home. Space stretched in a strange way as I hopped.

10.                Wolf
     
    Something was wrong. I should have entered Hop Space, but it