Seth examined the magical array Mau had found. He'd never heard of one with so many spells. Well, not that many anymore. Nearly half the stones were sliced up and their lights had gone out.

  Actually, the damage looked a lot like claw marks. He looked over at Mau. She was watching him from the corner of her eye as she pretended to be looking down the tunnel.

  It was her. She was the one who'd destroyed it and now she felt bad about it. Seth sighed. It didn't really matter why. They would have to work with what they had.

  "I wonder if we can get that illusion upstairs," Seth said. He tugged on the array to see if it was portable. It felt a little loose so he gave it a firm yank.

  Instead of moving, the front pulled off and stones scattered across the floor. Seth sighed again.

  "Hey, it's gone!" Duvessa exclaimed from the tunnel.

  Well, it was working a second ago. Now it was broken even worse. Maybe he could piece it back together enough that it'd work again.

  Seth had no idea how the guts of this thing worked, or what might make things worse. "I wish Selendrith were here," he muttered. "She'd know what to do with this stuff."

  Mau gave him a look.

  "You think she wouldn't have come down here? She followed us into Chicky-chicky's cave."

  Mau looked skeptical but didn't argue. She poked at a broken spell stone with one paw.

  He examined the busted array. Magical arrays were a common way for certain effects to happen on command. Lights in school that could be turned on from across the room. Platforms that lifted people to other floors and stopped on the right floor. They were studying some simple arrays in Ritual Geometry.

  There was nothing simple about this. The stone box the components had been assembled in was also part of the array. The carvings on it were so intricate the sides looked like lace.

  This part looked pretty old. There were scuffs and dust in it, and mild damage that Mau's claws didn't cause. There were also places where sections of the array had been cut out and replaced with new material that didn't quite match the older stuff.

  Seth looked for components that he could recognize and work with. How it fueled the spells was probably the most basic thing he could look for so he started there. He found it in an intact formation to gather mana. It was nearly identical to the one Selendrith had been teaching him, just smaller. He followed it to a damaged mana vault. Not badly damaged, but it looked like it wouldn't hold mana without being repaired. The rest he didn't recognize. He tried to follow it anyway.

  One interesting component was a crystal rod. It was about wand length and had been beneath the row of clear stones. That was the row with the most damage. The other interesting component was a clear orb that Mau had somehow managed to split in two.

  He fiddled with the stones, and tried to work out what the different pieces of the array did. He cast Detect Mana, and even Detect Life. He tried to determine the materials it was made from.

  It was much too advanced for him.

  Fine then. He didn't need to know what it was, or how it worked. He just needed it to do the thing it was made for. Without all its pieces.

  He pulled out the vault and took a closer look. It had been nicked. Seth stuck that in his pocket. It wasn't going to work here anymore, and maybe it could be repaired. The crystal wand was intact, but Seth couldn't figure out what it did. It connected something to something else, and did something too.

  Well, it could have interacted with the spell stones. Seth picked up an intact stone and touched it to the wand. Nothing. He channeled a little bit of mana into the spell stone and then touched it to the wand. Still nothing. He put mana in both the stone and the wand.

  "Aack! It's back! The ogre is back!" Blaise called from down the tunnel. "It's eating a person!"

  Seth jerked stone away from the wand.

  "Aaand it's gone!"

  Of course the ogre eating illusion would be of it eating a person. It couldn't possibly have been something normal, like a bowl of soup. Seth resisted sighing again. If he kept doing that, he'd hyperventilate.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Blaise and Duvessa joined him in the little tunnel. Blaise held one of Booth's lightstones, but it faded almost as soon as they arrived, leaving Seth's amulet as the only source of light.

  "Did you do that? With the illusion?" Blaise asked.

  "Yeah. Mau found this, and I'm trying to get it to work. I've figured out how to get the illusion to start, but I still need to figure out how to get it to move and how to get it upstairs."

  "Upstairs? Why–Oh! Brilliant. Yes, let's do that!" Duvessa said. She leaned over the smashed array and wiggled her fingers. "What should I start testing?"

  Seth handed her the cracked orb. "See if you can get this to do anything."

  For almost an hour I watched the kids play with the broken control panel. Array. Seth had called it a magical array. He occasionally would explain things to me, which I appreciated. I really should work harder at staying awake during class. I wasn't going to, but I should.

  I was very interested in the spell stones. If it were possible to store a spell in a stone, and then activate it, I could do that. I think. These stones had at least two things needed to activate them. The first was the wand that Seth had, and we were looking for the second.

  Well, the kids were looking for the second. I was getting a bit bored.

  "Mau, can you go look that way? You've got a light," Seth asked. Ugh. I needed to get up off my lazy butt and walk! The horror! The abuse! The– oh, I didn't actually care. I walked off down the tunnel.

  I didn't know what I was looking for. Would it be behind another illusion? Could I sense the mana in it?

  I opened my mouth and tasted the air. Cats can taste smells. It was a little more sensitive, to my mind, than sniffing.

  I can't smell mana, though. I tried anyway.

  I wondered how far was acceptably lazy. I had gone a short ways into the dark. There were light panels in the ceiling, but the light switch for this section hadn't been found. So, it was dark. I did have my light amulet, but I waited until it was fully dark before I lit it to see if my eyes or whiskers could do that work for me.

  Alas, no. I cannot see in pitch black.

  Imagine my surprise when I lit my amulet and a bunch of tiny lights scattered everywhere.

  What the fuck? We got a disco ball here! Groovy.

  Where the ceiling light should be was a slightly mounded panel. So not actually a ball. I wondered for a moment if disco balls were actually balls or not. I couldn't remember. Maybe not since this looked like a disco ball to me. Disco hemisphere? That phrase didn't sing. What was disco anyway? Sparkly light shows?

  Should I climb up there and cut it down? May as well.

  Climbing walls was easy. Ceilings required focus and control to not accidentally cut through the stone I was clinging to and fall on my head. Feet. Cats always land on their feet. Whatever. I didn't want to test it.

  Do ta do, I'm slicing away at where this thing is embedded, and it occurs to me to wonder what'll happen to it when I finish slicing through the rock.

  Right. Bad idea. I head down and go off to tell the kids what I found.

  Moments later the five of them are standing under the disco hemisphere.

  "We need to reach it somehow," Seth said.

  "Duvessa, you're taller than Blaise," Owen said. "I think I could have you stand on my shoulders and you might be able to open it or take it down."

  "Oh, yes! I could reach it then, easy," Duvessa said.

  Easy. Because circus tricks are always easy to do for people who've never tried them before. This should be entertaining at least.

  Owen squatted and held up his hand to help her balance as she climbed up. She could get as far as kneeling on his shoulders. Any time she tried to stand, or Owen tried to stand, she would lose her balance. Finally Booth offered his hands to both of them.

  "I can't tell if it opens. There's dirty dust all over it," Duvessa said. "Seth, could you blow some air at it?"

  Duvessa braced her hands against the ceiling, so Seth shrugged and cast Breeze.

  The disco hemisphere detached itself from the ceiling and shattered spectacularly on the ground. Shards sprayed Blaise, Owen, and Booth. Owen stepping back cost Duvessa her balance and she fell. Booth caught her waist and controlled her landing.

  Seth stood there with wide eyes. I could feel his shock through the link.

  "She said blow, not explode it, Seth," Blaise said.

  I choked.

  "It happened so fast! I didn't mean to!" Seth apologized.

  These kids were going to kill me.

  Seth rushed forward to help the others. "I swear I didn't mean to do it that hard!"

  I'm dead.

  Half an hour later the kids were experimenting with the illusion. During this time, I resurrected myself from my death of laughter, only to die again from ogre farts.

  They found a metal snowflake looking thing that set the location of the illusion. The problem was, they couldn't change its location relative to the snowflake. Putting the snowflake upside down on the floor created an upside down ogre on the ceiling a good distance down the tunnel.

  The orb had been what adjusted the snowflake. With the orb unusable, moving the snowflake was the only way to move the illusion.

  "The illusion hitches something awful," Blaise said. She was standing at the end of the little tunnel, watching as Seth tested another stone. This one had the ogre swinging its tree club around. "When we first saw it, it went from doing one thing to another really smoothly. It really looked alive. But now, every time we change what it's doing, there is this jump and it's instantly doing the other thing. There's no transition."

  "Then we find the smoothest-looking ones, and use those," Seth said. He couldn't see the illusion from where he was. "We'll run through all the stones here and figure out what we're going to use where."

  "I don't think this is going to work. It's too broken and too risky." Blaise gazed down the tunnel. "You and Owen didn't see any way to get to Thurstan's from here?" she asked Booth.

  "No, I didn't. But they've used a bunch of illusions already. They could have hidden it," Booth answered.

  "You really think this is better than burning the inn down?" Blaise asked. She picked up one of the broken stones and examined it.

  "We're going to expose them. They're not getting away with this," Seth said.

  Blaise nodded. "Fine then. Let's attack the town with an illusionary ogre."

  I thought this was a fabulously crazy plan.