Roy threw himself at the door and braced it shut. Kyle dashed over to help him. It shook and shuddered, slammed repeatedly from the other side.

  Samantha ran over, skeleton key at the ready. It shrank back down quickly, from oversized chest key to long three-toothed door key, but when she tried to put it in the lock, the door shunted forward, inches out of place. There was no doorknob to hold or handle to hold up, so they had to press it flush against the frame before she could get the key in.

  Roy refused to lose a contest of strength to Walter and Mike of all people. He backed up half a step and slammed into the door again, driving it back against the frame. Samantha pounced on the opportunity and turned her key in the lock.

  She left the key in the lock. Seconds later, keys jingled on the other side, trying and failing to turn it.

  Cate sprinted over to the chest while Bastion stashed the last of its contents. A moment later, she lifted it overhead and threw it with expert precision.

  It thudded against the door and snapped shut, regaining its full magical weight in an instant.

  Samantha leaned over Roy, squishing against his neck and shoulders as she reached for her key.

  “Hey. Who’s up there? I can hear you moving around, you know. If you’re more of Skeeter’s goons then I want you to know you’re not getting out of here alive.”

  “Fuck you, Walter,” Bastion called out. “We’re taking our discs back, and we’ll get the gold one too, even if we have to take it off your ice-cold corpse.”

  “Who the hell are you people?” said Walter.

  “I just told you, dumbass. We’re the people whose stolen goods you bought.”

  “Well, some of us are,” said Roy. He didn't want to leave out their other friends.

  “Yeah,” said Samantha. “The rest of us are just here to take all your tokens!”

  “You. You…” Walter’s footsteps thudded against the door as he became too enraged to form a sentence.

  “Let’s move,” said Bastion. "Before he figures out a way to magic that door open.”

  “Wait,” said Cate. “We should destroy this statue first. That would weaken the wizards.” She smashed her baton into its face, but didn’t even make a scratch. “Huh.”

  “If we can’t break it, then we’re taking it with us,” said Roy. He quickly moved to tie a rope around it, and they all worked to pull it towards a window.

  As they dragged it across the floorboards, they listened to Walter moaning to Mike.

  “All those guys downstairs just let them walk up here. They’re as dumb as the raiders. We’re supposed to be better than that.”

  It was hard going. They all had to push and pull in sync, walking it like a fridge or a wardrobe.

  Bastion threw open the shutters and dropped another rope. As they reached it, they all noticed the problem. The crystal wizard wouldn’t fit through unless they lifted and twisted it. They shifted positions, almost tripping over each other.

  “Blast the door?” said Walter. “No. That would melt the tokens and wands.”

  They rocked the statue back and forth until it tipped over against the windowsill.

  Kyle stepped back to give himself a running start and barrelled into it headfirst. That lifted it onto the ledge, where it hung halfway through. Kyle dropped to the floor, dazed.

  More footsteps behind the door. Rushed words that Roy couldn’t make out.

  “They’re going out the window?” said Walter. A pause. “Fine. Fine! Fireball it is.”

  “Time to go,” shouted Bastion, already climbing out of the window.

  Roy hesitated. He wanted to make sure everyone else got out safely.

  Cate cartwheeled over the statue and the ledge. Sam flung herself through as a compressed ball of bones.

  Kyle wasn’t getting up.

  Roy grabbed him under the arms and hauled him upright. He dragged him toward the ledge, but then Kyle shocked Roy by lifting him up and vaulting him over it.

  Boom.

  The wall erupted in a blast of orange flame. Shards of wood shot past Roy as a wave of furnace-hot air hit him mid-fall.

  Dropping like the rock it was, the crystal wizard overtook him, leaving him staring at the broken stones surrounding what had been a window frame seconds earlier.

  Falling backwards like this, it seemed to take forever, like he was an action movie star limboing under a hail of bullets, getting bored as he waited for them to slowly fly past. But that theme didn’t belong to him; the real action hero followed a second later.

  Kyle leapt from the tower’s husk triumphantly. He’d been facing away from the explosion and was thus completely unharmed.

  Roy landed on something soft, and watched the crystal wizard slam face-first into concrete without suffering so much as a chipped nose.

  Placing his feet on the ground, he realized that Cate had caught him. That theme of hers just kept getting more impressive.

  Bastion was still holding the rope, though he’d landed in a heap after its top end was blasted out of the tower, along with the ledge it was attached to and a large section of the wall.

  They were right in the middle of the roof, and wizards lined the entire perimeter. It was dark, but their enemies all carried flashlights, and Samantha’s glowing costume made hiding impossible.

  One of them appeared, backlit by the giant wizard staff over the storefront, raising his wand.

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  Two lights flared: the crystal wizard behind them, and the incoming fireball its glow heralded.

  Roy led the way, sprinting to a position behind the crystal wizard. The others quickly followed, taking cover before the fireball slammed into it.

  When the flames died out, it was still pristine.

  “It’s completely indestructible,” Roy marveled.

  “It’s a liability,” said Bastion. “It gives away our position whenever they cast a spell.”

  “We can’t leave it here and let them keep getting instant wand recharges. It’s too strong an advantage,” said Roy.

  “Well, how do we move it?”

  As they spoke, it flashed nonstop. A barrage of fireballs hammered into it, shoving it back each time, until a headshot toppled it. More fireballs hit the statue after it fell, forcing them to sprint back as it was blasted along the roof, pointy hat first.

  It came to rest when the hat’s wide brim jammed against an HVAC duct at the front of the building, right next to a giant fiberglass hand.

  The next fireball came from the side, but an ice blast from another wand collided with it in mid-air, turning both spells into a cloud of steam and granting them a few seconds’ reprieve.

  Roy unsheathed his sword to try to dislodge the statue, and noticed that all the stick-on stars had recharged. If it could do that, there was no way he was leaving it behind.

  Before he could fire a star-blast at the steel duct, Samantha was on it with her own blade, rending metal like tissue paper.

  “Quick,” said Bastion. “Push it over the edge. I’ll get a rope down there.”

  The steam cleared. Half a dozen wizards faced them now, taking dead aim.

  Bang.

  One wizard snapped backward as if yanked by invisible strings.

  Bang.

  A second spun and collapsed.

  Bang.

  A third dropped before he even knew he’d been hit.

  The remaining wizards froze. Flashlights jerked wildly across the roof-line, searching for the gunfire’s source.

  Another shot cracked through the night air from the treeline.

  Roy grinned. “Nate.”

  “Damn,” said Bastion. “I really need him to make me some bullets.”

  “Hey,” came a shout from above. “I can see you down there, thieves.”

  Walter stood at the top of the tower, pointing down at them from a window.

  “Now you die.”

  He pointed a skull wand at Roy, but its green glow fizzled out before it could fire.

  “God damn it. Another dud. Just once, I want this thing to work.”

  He didn’t let up.

  Next came a lightning bolt. It hit Samantha, but dry bones don’t conduct electricity, so she just laughed it off.

  After that, he pulled out what looked like an accordion grabber claw and aimed it at Bastion’s bag right as he was dropping a rope off the side of the roof.

  “No!” Bastion shouted, struggling to keep his grip on the bag without letting go of the rope. “The money’s in there.”

  “The movies are in there!” Roy exclaimed, grabbing Bastion around the waist and pulling.

  Future Knight: Part 2 was in there. The 2-disc set. With four different commentary tracks and a three-hour making-of documentary.

  They’d had to sell everything they owned to afford the passage to Florida, and giving up his last copy had felt like losing a part of himself. He wasn’t letting this one go for anything.

  Roy heaved like it was a tug o’ war, and steadily gained ground, until Walter’s grip broke and the grabber claw flew from his hand.

  More wizards were coming up the stairs and onto the roof. More than Nate could shoot in time.

  “Get down, however you can,” Roy shouted.

  This roof was a killing floor. He once again decided that he’d stay until last and make sure the others were safe. He didn’t know why, but when it came to fights, he’d started feeling unstoppable lately.

  Kyle roundhouse kicked the crystal wizard over the edge, then dove after it. Roy peered over the edge and watched him roll off the hood of a wrecked car.

  Kate followed with an acrobatic roll, hit the ground running, and sprinted across the parking lot.

  “Don’t worry about me,” said Samantha. “No fall damage is one of the perks of being a skeleton.”

  That just left him and Bastion. The two guys whose themes didn’t help with falling.

  With the air ducts reduced to red shrapnel by fireballs and lightning bolts, and the crystal wizard gone, they had no cover left. So they raced along the big wizard’s palm, right to the edge of the fingertips.

  “Do you still have that rope?” Roy asked.

  Bastion shook his head. “It got burned up back there.”

  Roy looked at the cracked concrete below. It had to be at least twenty feet down. Maybe not certain death, but at least in fractured legs territory, which was almost the same thing with wizards chasing them.

  A group of them had abandoned their own cover, moving closer for a cleaner shot.

  “I have an idea,” Roy said.

  He pulled out the butterfly-wing wand and wished he had time to get the robes out of his bag. Surprisingly, he still felt a zap of resonance pulsing through his hand. Apparently, magic knight was a valid theme. He jabbed it towards Bastion’s chest and pressed the button, then shoved him backwards off the roof.

  “Roy, look out!” Bastion shouted as he drifted downward on newly sprouted wings.

  Roy heard something behind him. Hooves, stomping louder and louder.

  He leapt, a panicked belly-flop of a dive, and felt air rush past as he stared at his lightless wand.

  It all happened in slow motion. The fading hoof stomps, a drawn-out shout from below, the approaching concrete.

  He closed his eyes and mashed the button like this was a beat-em-up game.

  Whoosh. He opened his eyes to a burst of light and slammed flat against the ground.

  Bastion grabbed his hand and dragged him to his feet. “Whew. Cutting it close with the wings there, Roy. You’re lucky that thing’s right there.” He nodded at the crystal wizard lying on its side.

  “I’ve started feeling like I’m too lucky to die. Like the universe has plans for me.”

  “You keep thinking like that, and it guarantees you will die.”

  “Aaargh!” The scream came from behind the statue.

  They ran around it and found Tex, who’d fallen to his knees.

  “Are you OK?” asked Roy.

  “What happened?” asked Bastion.

  “I think I’m alright, yeah. My armor caught it, whatever it was.”

  He turned, revealing a circular dent that had punctured the back plating without breaking through.

  “The hooved thing,” said Roy. “It came down after me. Didn’t you see it?”

  “No,” said Bastion. “I was watching you. Anyway, he’s fine. It pays to be a tank in heavy armor. Now let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “What about the statue?” Roy asked.

  “That’s what I was here for,” said Tex, holding up a rope. “I figured it was important since you guys shoved it all the way down here.”

  They worked together to hitch the crystal wizard to Tex’s horse, which he’d kept nearby. It turned out that horses were really good at dragging things. All Tex needed to do was slap its back to start it running for the trees.

  Then they ran after it, jumping over the cracks in the parking lot.

  Roy was glad for the store’s lights. Some of those gorges were deep enough to swallow a person. He was sure he saw what looked like the cracked windshield of a car at the bottom of one of them.

  After a few tense moments expecting a fireball that never came, they reached the others. Everyone had made it back safely. Kyle gave him a fist bump when he arrived, and Samantha pulled him into a hug.

  They mounted up and rode off faster than the wizards could follow, laughing and hollering into the night.

  Yep, thought Roy. Too lucky to die. Too lucky to lose.