He couldn’tbelieve it. They were feeding him rats! Then again when he thoughtabout it, he did look like a spider and presumably that’s what theyate. The only problem was he had never tried to eat as a Llanllean.Somanller had showed him but he didn’t try it at the time.
The idea was tostab his sucker tube into the stomach cavity of each rat and squirtsome digestive fluid into it. However, his sucker tube didn’t seemhard enough at the tip and wouldn’t penetrate the skin of the ratand having only a left arm didn’t help much either.
FortunatelyGlimmer flew over and made a hole in each of the rat’s stomachcavities with a little dagger. When it came to squirting digestivefluid into them he managed to get it all over the outside as well.This meant that when he picked them up after a few minutes to suckup the dissolved internals the animals simply fell apart in hishand.
At first he wasrather reluctant at sucking up the rat juices but after the firsttaste he lost all hesitation. It was really quite delicious. A lotlike a warm meat stew with a definite wild rat flavour. Then hebegan to worry.
If thedigestive juices dissolved up the rats so quickly would it dissolveup his hand and arm? He tried wiping the stuff off his hand butcouldn’t wipe it off his arm so started desperately whirling itaround. Glammer must have thought that he was going a bit crazy asshe darted off presumably to report back to Llalorax.
After a fewminutes, nothing seemed to happen to his arm so he concluded thathis body was resistant to his own digestive juices like it wasresistant to his own poison and settled down to eat the other tworats and then work out what to do next. The rat lunch had actuallycheered him up. It had got him out of the depressive mood he was inand he started to think positively.
‘Okay how do weget out?’ he said as if talking to himself.
‘You’re a mindwizard Aquitain, act like one, use your mind. There is always away.’ he remembered that his grandfather had said this many timesand he started to mull over his knowledge about dead magicareas.
Dead magiccells were usually built to contain magic users. They were builtout of rock that had been caught in a certain type of magic stormthat leached the magic out of the surrounding terrain. The rockbecame like a sponge to magic absorbing any in the vicinity.
If a wizardused a power in the area the power almost always failed. Even magicitems or effects cast before entering the dead magic area quicklydrained or failed once inside it.
Back at hisGranddad’s mansion he had experimented with rock from a dead magiczone. It soaked up mind magic power as well. It was quite differentto the chaos matter his collar was made of, that seems to almostreflect magic. It suddenly occurred to him that he might still havehis collar on. It looked like a worn out old leather collar with noreal value. He felt his neck and sure enough they hadn’t removedit. Now what to do with it?
He removed hiscollar and willed it to take the shape of a ball. It worked; thechaos matter wasn’t affected by the dead magic rock around him. Twosmall powerstones embedded in the material fell to the ground. Theywould be useless in here but the chaos matter, now that could beuseful. First he had to get some mobility back. He thought on thatfor a while then came up with the idea of creating a cocoon orsmall haven around himself where he could use his mind magicwithout it leaking away into the rock.
He formed thechaos material into a flat disc then kept flattening it until itwas like a large oval serving dish. Since he was quite smallwithout legs he would be the main course.
He manoeuvredhis body by rocking, rolling and shoving the plate under his bodyuntil he was on top of it. Then holding the edge of it he used hismind to shape it up, around and over him. The end result lookedsomething like a large eggshell flattened on the bottom side with acouple of fine holes for air at the top.
Quickly heactivated his shape change ability to turn into a gnome with legs.It worked! It actually worked. He was elated. He scratched himselfjust to prove that his legs were really there.
‘Well done!’said Slivver.
‘I can see thatwe’re going to make a great team.’
‘What have youdone to help!’ asked Aquitain.
He stopped toconsider his next move when he heard a tapping on the top of hisvessel.
‘Are you inthere Aquitain?’ whispered Glammer.
‘Of course Iam. Where else would I be?’ he replied a little annoyed.
‘Oh. How didyou make this big egg thing? Llalorax would like to be able to dothis. Can you teach him? Then we can all escape.’
‘One questionat a time please Glammer. I can talk because I have changed shapeto a gnome. Now as to the other question I don’t think I can teachyour master how to do this without getting out of the cell. How isthe door locked?’
‘There is a setof levers, one for each of the six cells. But they’re much too bigfor me to move.’ said Glammer.
‘Damn.’ repliedAquitain. ‘Where is Llalorax? Did they chop his legs off too?’
‘He’s in a celltwo down from yours and yes they chopped off his legs as well. Hesaid that it’ll take at least six weeks to grow them backagain.’
‘That’s neat,’thought Aquitain, ‘I can lose a leg and grow it back again in a fewweeks without even using my abilities. Then again it’s much fastermy way,’ as he changed back to his spider form with a complete setof new legs. He split the eggshell open and stepped out.
Glammer wasquite surprised and zipped out of the small hole in the cell doorpresumably to tell Llalorax what she saw. Seeing her brought backmemories of Alpha. It would have done exactly the same for him.
‘I wonder whereAlpha is?’ he mumbled then dismissed the thought. ‘No time forsentiments,
