Free The Questory of Root Karbunkulus - Quill by Kamilla Reid Page B

felt a little sad at
the thought of missing out on a second exciting adventure.
    No, the horror was being stuck on this second
adventure with Ernest Skubblenob.
    There was only one thing for it. Sleep. Maybe
they’d wake up to find the old inventor was just a nasty dream they
had coincidentally shared. Okay, maybe not but staying up, freaking
out ‘til sunrise wouldn’t help any either. Maybe, if they were
really lucky in the morning the old inventor would be too
embarrassed to return.
    Fingers were crossed.
     
    Root’s walk through the corridors back to her
room was burdened by the desire to visit Krism whose light was
still on. She paused, on the cusp of total burnout.
    Nope. Her drooping eyelids simply wouldn’t
allow it. She would have to see Krism in the morning, after a
comatose few hours in bed.
    Once returned to her room she jotted down a
note and passed it to her Doorhand. She hadn’t used the Messenger
System before since most deliveries were botched or worse,
monitored. But sleep had already taken over her legs and would soon
consume her entirely. “Room sixty eleven, please. His name’s
Krism.”
    Root’s Door Hand, a rather stalky thing with
oversized knuckles was pleased to get an assignment, having
recently felt undervalued and in need of job stimulus. One can only
greet and announce so much before dying of boredom. A dispatch was
just the solution. It snatched the paper from Root and disappeared
to whatever messenger route it was that Door Hands took. Through
the walls most likely.
    Root yawned so wide her jaw nearly unhinged.
Even Mordge’s regular nightcap was put off for this much needed
‘preliminary sleep’ as Lian called it.
    But tired as she was, it was one of those
attempts where the body is more than ready and willing but the mind
just can’t concur. She stared up from her bed at the cracked
ceiling above. This time tomorrow she would be immersed in the
Second Magisterial Treasure Quest of DréAmm. With so much time
spent pillaging their rooms, all they had eked out of a plan was
back-tracking their last Quest, hoping to find the Quill where it
may have fallen. Anywhere from the Death Yard at Loz to the Sea
Wraith’s domain to Bumplekins’ secret cottage to the very
unfriendly Mortem Woods.
    A thrill swept through her as she remembered
her first Quest. Sure, the idea of finding the Quill sitting
innocuously in one of their rooms had had its merits. But truth be
told, a second adventure was the trump. Root had spent so many
weeks training for and looking forward to it. The adventure and
excitement had worked its way under her skin and she suspected that
it had been the same for Dwyn and Lian.
    As an orchestra of crickets serenaded outside
her window, she felt exactly as she had the very first night of the
very first Quest: lucky and thrilled and anxious and terrified and
happy. She eventually fell asleep but her dreams were fraught with
images of the HaloEm Quill floating on a vast seascape, only to be
suddenly chomped and dragged under by an old man’s pair of false
teeth.
     

10
DEAD TREADERS
     
     
    A Dead Treader is nocturnal. But that doesn’t
mean it dances under the moon or anything wasteful like that. No,
no a Dead Treader is not one to socialize. It comes out just long
enough to find its prey and eat it. A fast food kinda thing.
Nothing too fussy in the diet. Unfortunately for the prey this
usually means anything ‘warm and breathing’, which regrettably
means being eaten alive. However, if one could reach for a brighter
side to such an ordeal, at least the prey is paralyzed first and
can’t feel that it’s being eaten. But that doesn’t really help the
fact that it knows its being eaten, which, in the end may be
a far worse way to go. Unless of course the eatee passed out in the
process as is usually the case.
    Most victims of a Dead Treader had found a
nice place to sleep after an active evening of foraging. By the
time they realized that they were now being foraged,