THE FIRST FLOOR

26 FEBRUARY, FRIDAY, CONTINUED

Our hole in the ground led us directly into the Warlock's Tower. The tower itself felt like a giant magic treasure, if that made sense to you. It had stairs curved along the wall up to the next floor. Everything, the floors, walls, and stairs were made of white stone.

The moment I got up to the ground floor of the tower, I checked the windows all around to make sure we were at the right place. Then I looked around for the elusive Warlock, you know, just in case he was just standing in the background pretending to be a statue or whatnot, but he wasn't anywhere in sight. My lucky sense of direction pressed on to move up the stairs though, so we were still on his trail.

"This... is the Warlock's Tower?" Ki asked. He was the next wolf they pulled out.

"This Warlock guy is a nutcase." Barry shrugged, he ran his finger in a circle next to his head, "This place is cuckoo."

"It is just a little overly eccentric." Ki admitted.

The humans were hoisted up next.

"What is this place?" River asked. His stone floated upwards, and he quickly grabbed it and tucked it back inside his clothes.

"This is interesting." Keanu nodded to the ceiling.

Hahaha, every time someone came up, they would look around and be thrown off by the Warlock's home decor choices. I myself couldn't quite decide if the Warlock was a nutcase or just eccentric. Maybe he had hired Chloe to be his interior designer too?

Either that, or this was actually a super elaborate enchantment. I couldn't tell. Everything in the Warlock Tower smelled like it had been doused in Warlock magic. Never mind the stuff, the whole tower must have been soaked in magic.

The ceiling was pretty high, and had many chandeliers made of colorful crystals. They hung there glowing like a super elaborate science project of the solar system. Except there were lots and lots of them, each one boasting a varying number of different colored stones and hung at different heights across the ceiling with wire and that clear magic thread that the warlock liked to use.

I worried at first, that this entire set up was a giant crystal enchantment, just like the kind the Warlock had hung all around his forest. But unlike the clear colourless crystals that hung from the branches in the forest, these crystals were deeply colored in reds, and blues, and greens, and amber...

They hung soundlessly, and didn't shoot lasers or anything like that.

Okay, maybe the warlock just really liked collecting pretty colored crystals and making windchimes.

The rest of the first floor was even stranger. Just as Cobra had reported, there was no one around, but it was filled with giant pillows.

Really colorful giant fluffy pillows.

I walked around with River and Keanu just taking in the sight of it. The pillows were scattered and piled up all around us. I resisted the urge to touch them, but River and Keanu didn't have such qualms.

"Oh! This is amazing!" River flopped happily into the nearest pile of rainbow puffiness.

Keanu picked up a bright blue one and squeezed it, "Ah! That's because it's filled with down."

With what now?

It turned out that the warlock's pillows were filled with 100% down feathers - which turned out to be small fluffy white feathers.

I realized this when River pulled up one of the pillows - it was the size of his torso, and with some effort flung it straight at me. I put up my fists to block purely by reflex and the bright turquoise silk pillowcase went poof. It just burst open like a bag of potato chips in Jonah's hands.

What scocery was this? All floaty and fluffy all around me...

This had to be something fancier than the Pure Microfiber Anti Dustmite Comfort Gel Gold Standard pillows that Ki magic had equipped all our beds with in our new Alpha House because Ki looked suitably impressed.

"Prince River..." Wilhelm, the voice of reason spoke now, "Perhaps, it would be prudent to conduct ourselves with restraint as honoured guests now that we are in the Warlock's personal abode."

Hahaha, honored guests, my foot.

We already broke a hole in the middle of his floor, but yeah, I guess, since we were planning to return the ring to its owner, we shouldn't be making a mess of his home.

I brushed off a couple of stray feathers and abandoned the two boys in the pillows. For the lack of anywhere else to go, I returned to my wolves who were gathered around the hole.

They had just dragged EJ's body out.

"Aw, man... who knew a scrawny kid would be so heavy!" Barry joked as he plonked the red head down on the stone floor like a rag doll.

In general, the guys have been pretty rough with EJ's poor unconcious body.

"What a troublesome guy!" Fluffy squatted down to poke the red head's sleeping face. (I don't think Fluffy was qualified to call someone else troublesome.) "Cobra is so scary!"

One look and it was pretty obvious Fluffy was teasing Cobra,

Sigh, while I was happy that Fluffy was back to his usual self now, Fluffy's usual self liked to make trouble.

"Ssssshhhh...." Cobra answered, and then he added with a small smile, "He was too noisy."

Oooohhh... Cobra was making another attempt to tell a joke. This was a good sign right?

Ben's alive, we're out of the warlock dungeons, we're getting closer to the warlock, and all my wolves are okay!

Well, almost all my wolves...

"Hey, guys?" Torque was still down there. He had been the muscle that boosted the larger half of our party up.

But while it was easy enough for a big guy like him to give the other guys a boost up, it wasn't that easy for him to jump up on his own. Now he was the last one left in the hole.

"On a count of three." Luckily bossy Ben was around to coordinate, "Torque jump, Barry catch his right arm, I'll get his left..."

"Beta, please be mindful of your wound." Ki reminded Ben from the side with his gentle smile.

"Shut up, dog." Ben gritted back, bit he amended himself, "Barry, catch his right arm. Ink get his left. The rest of you just grab whatever you can and pull."

Yes, this was the original plan by arguably the most brilliant mind in Night Leaf.

But I wasn't complaining. It's not as if I could think of anything better.

Barry flattened himself on his stomach and reached his arm into the hole, "Come on, Torque! Jump! We'll catch you."

Ink followed suit on the other side, "Since scary beta says so, it should work. 85% chance."

"Are you sure? It's always like this..." I heard Torque's voice worry, "Whenever we fall into a pit, I'm always the last one out, and it's never easy to pull me out."

Eh? Was falling into pits something my special team wolves did a lot?

"True, but we never left you behind right?" Barry asked.

"If it were EJ... That might be a different story." Fluffy smiled, "Right, Cobra?"

Cobra nodded, "Sssshhhhh...."

But I guess he didn't have a comeback for that. Nevermind, Cobra. Keep practicing.

Anyway, Fluffy was just joking right? It's a good thing EJ was usually quick and agile. If it were EJ, bouncing out on his own would've been a piece of cake. I caught sight of his unconcious form dumped unceremoniously on the ground and realized I didn't have to worry. Even unconcious, the guys had dragged him all the way to this point afterall.

My wolves may be noisy and troublesome, but they were really good guys in all the important ways.

Their first attempt failed. When Torque tried to jump from the pedestal, the force of his weight caused the rocks to crumble and slide.

"S***! Almost!" Ben hissed under his breath.

"Language beta." Ki smiled.

"Shut up, dog." Ben snapped back at him.

"Sorry, sorry!" Torque yelled up, "I'm too heavy!"

"Don't mind it!" Barry called back and readjusted himself, "Try again, I'll definitely catch you this time."

Barry might be the ideal partner when you had to do a trust fall.

THUMP. Or not. Torque had fallen back in. This time was pretty close though. I actually saw Torque's arms and the top of his blond head pop out above the floor line.

"S***." Ben was annoyed now, "Who let go?"

"Beta, mind your..."

"SHUT IT, DOG!" Ben snarled.

"The floor came loose, beta." Ink explained, "Our combined weight is approximately 89.5 Kilograms over the loading limit."

Say what now? How heavy was Torque? If he were built like a tank, would he be as heavy as one?

If this was a trust fall exercise, whoever got paired with Torque was going to get crushed.

Oh wait, talking about trust fall exercises, "Ben, remember the team building exercises we had to do for Lycan Study Group?"

Ben sighed, "You mean that one year after Teacher S.O attended a scam leadership course and decided to run one for us too?"

Really? I had no idea. But now that Ben mentioned it, we had these sessions incorporated in our Saturday morning Lycan Study Groups one Summer before it just stopped and was never mentioned again.

"I mean the one where there was a rope tied across two trees and we had to get our whole team over it without touching the rope." I decided to specify.

"We were in different teams." Ben remembered.

Which was true. We had split up Boys VS Girls for that one.

"What has that got to do with this?" Ben asked.

"You guys got stuck at the last guy too." I said.

Ben crossed his arms and growled.

Jonah was their last man. The guy's method was using Jonah's boost up and throwing themselves over the rope and onto the grassy ground on the other side.

My method was to lower the rope, but Teacher S.O. had said it wasn't allowed.

But we managed to get everyone across in the end. We didn't leave a single girl behind. The guys had protested, "They're all so light, they don't have a big guy like Jonah!"

"I'm not big!" Jonah had protested, "I'm just big boned."

"He means a big bone head." Lizzy interpreted for us.

Our solution was pretty much by accident. We did try to throw the smallest one of us over first. This would be Darlyn, but because we were girls, she screamed when she realized she was going to end up falling onto the ground from a height after crossing the rope. And the rest of us girls drew her back before she was thrown.

So I said, "Me first."

Because I was the Alpha. I could take it.

"Are you sure, Sam?" Lizzy worried because we were all still pups then.

I was also the biggest pup among the girls. Although Jessica was an inch taller, she was willow thin. I, in comparison was sturdy like an oak.

"Yeah, just do your best to boost me over." I said.

The hardest part of the exercise was for the girls to get me over. It took all of them, and they really just lifted me up and threw me.

Luckily, I landed on Ben. Poor Ben. He said he blacked out on impact, "I saw a white light, I thought my back cracked."

But he was already back on his feet so Lizzy just scolded him mercilessly, "Why were you just standing there like a doofus?"

"I didn't think you girls would actually throw her!" Ben yelled back.

Anyway, I got over the rope, and after that it was a lot easier. I would help catch whoever was next. Jessica was last, but she was pretty agile and light.

"We came out in the wrong order." I said, "Torque should've come out first. Then the lightest and highest jumper last."

"So... We all go back into the hole, Alpha?" Barry asked.

Ben thought about it, "No, just Ink and Barry and Cobra."

Ben smirked evily at the three wolves, "What are you waiting for? Go."

"Yes, beta!" And they obediently dropped back down into the whole.

My wolves can be surprising obedient sometimes. Could it be? Maybe there were some things about the Warlock lands that wasn't hatable.

Torque proved to be even heavier than the guys had expected, and Fluffy had to go down too, but Torque was shoved out eventually.

"What's with this place?" Torque looked around in a bewildered expression.

Yeah. Ikr.

"Torque, lend a hand, will you?" Barry called up.

"Oh yeah. Sorry." Torque turned back and with one arm pulled Barry out like he was a rabbit from a magician's hat.

Then he pulled out Ink and Fluffy and Cobra, all by himself.

"Oh." Barry marveled, "Now we know how to get out if we fall into another pit."

"Pretty Alpha is not only beautiful, she is also clever!" Fluffy praised, but mostly because he was messing with Ben, "Even cleverer than Scary Beta."

Ben growled lowly.

"No, no!" I quickly shook my head, "Ben's the smart one! I was just lucky!"

"Whatever, Sam." Ben shrugged it off, "What now?"

Eh? I looked around the ground floor, the crystals hanging above us and the pillows scattered around us.

And then suddenly the world tilted, just a little, and then the pieces of broken rocks affixed themselves back to patch up the hole in the floor.

"S***." Ben gritted, "He knows we're here."