The Secret of Spellshadow Manor 5 by Bella Forrest (best biographies to read TXT) 📗

didn’t particularly want to push his luck. He retreated back into the woods. He needed to figure out a way to bypass the guards, get into the pagoda, and find Hadrian. With the high level of security, it seemed like a near impossible task. And yet, Alex knew there had to be a way to outfox them. To come all this way for nothing was not an option.

Looking down at the beetle in his hand, he saw that the flashing had slowed, but as he stepped back into the forest, it blinked faster again, renewing his hope that something awful hadn’t yet happened to his friends. Perhaps they were still hiding in the forest, waiting to sneak inside the pagoda, just as he was.

With each step, the beetle flashed quicker, leading the way. Alex followed it, using it as a rudimentary kind of compass, until the blinking light was flashing so fast that it had become a steady light.

Peering ahead, Alex could make out the shape of something in the trees, though it was too dark to see clearly. The figure lumbered around in the shadows, staggering here and there as if injured. It looked human, but for all Alex knew, it could be a trap, meant to ensnare him.

Friend or foe, he couldn’t be sure, but there was only one way to find out. Taking a deep breath, he moved closer.

Chapter 4

Alex approached cautiously, trying to get a better look at the shadow to see if it was one of the gold-and-white soldiers. The foliage kept obscuring his view, making it impossible to discern the shape of the person ahead. He skirted around the trees for a clearer vantage point, but as he neared, something made him pause. Close to his foot was a toadstool, with another nearby, and another and another, forming a very large ring around the space before him. It reminded him of an old fairytale his grandmother used to tell him, about never setting foot in a fairy circle made of toadstools in the deepest part of the woods because the fairies would trap any intruders and take them to the fairy world, never to be heard from again.

A familiar buzz surrounded him, the same he’d heard beside the cherry trees, and Alex knew it was indeed a trap, just not one laid by any fairies. This was a trap laid by soldiers, and there was someone caught inside.

“Who’s there?” he whispered.

The lumbering figure froze, the shaded face turning in Alex’s direction.

“Alex, is that you?” a familiar voice replied.

“Professor?”

“Indeed, it’s me!” Lintz cried. “Oh goodness, Alex, I am simply ecstatic to hear your voice! We didn’t know what had happened to you! Where did you go?”

“It’s a long story. I’ll tell you everything once we’ve gotten you out of here.” Alex strained his eyes to see the faint glimmer of a barrier in front of him, keeping Lintz within. “How did you get caught, anyway?”

“I missed the signs,” Lintz replied grimly. “It’s the toadstools—they’re clockwork inside, filled to the brim with barrier magic. One false step and here I am, stuck!”

“No soldiers?”

Lintz shook his head, coming closer to the edge of the trap, where Alex stood. “Not yet… though I don’t know for how much longer.”

Alex analyzed the fairy ring, brainstorming how he was going to get the professor out of this mess. If the toadstools were forged from clockwork, as Lintz said, he knew they should be relatively easy to break.

“I’m going to try and bust you out,” Alex said, glancing down at the toadstools once more.

“Goodness, no, you mustn’t try something so risky just for little old me!” Lintz protested, but Alex was already kneeling in the grass beside the first one, trying to figure out the mechanisms he would have to break in order to bring the trap’s barrier down.

Alex glanced up. “I can’t just leave you here, Professor. Those soldiers could be along at any moment, and if they find you, they’ll know there are intruders among them.”

“Well… if you must try, be very careful. These traps are well made, and I wouldn’t want anything happening to you.”

Alex held out his hands a short distance from the first toadstool and weaved his anti-magic toward the small piece of clockwork. It was dainty and convincing, the red cap with the white spots painted in a hyper-realistic fashion.

Pulling back on his anti-magic, he felt some resistance as he tried to disrupt the source of the trap’s barrier, reversing the cogs in order to break them. However, he found he couldn’t grasp all the pieces at once; when he’d just about managed to stall one section, another would take over, defying his anti-magical instructions. Eventually, he realized that a delicate approach wasn’t going to work.

Pressing his hands on the cap of the toadstool, he forced a wave of energy through the mechanism, flooding it with anti-magic until he heard the satisfying clunk of the whole system breaking down. There was a whiny whirring sound as the last few cogs tried their best to keep the flow going, before they too gave up. As soon as the high-pitched noise ceased, the shimmering veil fell, setting Lintz free.

“You did it!” the professor bellowed as he stepped out of the circle, clapping Alex hard on the back.

He smiled. “It was nothing a little anti-magic couldn’t fix.”

“It’s so wonderful to see you, my dear boy,” Lintz said, a perplexed look on his brow. “We were so worried. One minute, the portal was there, and the next, it was gone. You have to believe I had nothing to do with it—I kept it open, and we were all waiting down by the forest’s edge for your return, but then there was a snap, and the next thing we know, the portal is gone, and you with it. A moment later, a troop of soldiers walked past, doing a search of the perimeter, so we had to escape into the forest itself. I’m so sorry, Alex.”

Alex got to