The warm rush of magic meets you for the second time as you teleport again.
You blink once, twice, thrice... That's all.
It was that place. The home of the mad crest sorcerer John Day. The island where he performed his mad crest sorcerer experiments and things of that nature. The entire place was just maddening. Not to mention dirty. It would seem that mad sorcerers don't have time to clean.
You hear the oh, so familiar creak of the island's only building's rusty door.
It's John Day! Hurry! Run!
You shudder and frantically try to activate the teleport orb but in your harried state, you only manage to drop it. You chase the orb as it rolls away on the rocky ground. You stop suddenly. The orb has stopped rolling away... by hitting the front of the mad sorcerer's boots.
Fearfully, you look up.
With a mad gleam in his eyes, the mad crest sorcerer holds up a grey rat with feathers haphazardly glued to it. The rat looks awfully mad... Well, you suppose you'd be mad too if you were covered with feathers. Actually... Feathers... Well, yes, mad.
"You the maid I ordered?"
"No," you reply as politely as possible.
"That's too bad, my auto-dusting-magic experiment here isn't working too well," he admits, more to himself than to you, "But I'm glad you're here-"
"Umm..." you interject, "I really have to be going."
You reach for the teleport orb but John Day "accidentally" kicks the teleport orb past you towards the rocky beach from where you came.
"You the clock maker? I been waitin' for ages!" the mad sorcerer exclaims. He flails his arms wildly, almost flinging his makeshift feather duster away.
You blink in surprise. This was new. Usually, when you told him you weren't the maid, he ignored you. "Umm... no."
"There it is, on the wall. Ain't been tickin' for 1, 5, shucks, maybe even 10 years!" He points to a barrel.
"Uhh... that's not a clock."
"Oh, we don't have time for this." He takes your right hand with left, which is thankfully not the one holding the rat, and drags you into his house, "Quick! Fix that chair! Then you can use it to reach the roof."
He points to a bookshelf.
"That's not a chair," you reply apprehensively, taking a few steps towards the door.
"She's not a very good handyman, is she Dusty?" John Day pets "Dusty" the rat a few times before stroking his unshaven chin with his free hand. "Maybe I should fix her like I fixed you?"
"Eep!"
You run with all your might through the door and down to the beach, scooping up the teleport orb along your way.
"There's no place like home," you murmur, feeling the orb's magic wash over you, "There's no place like home."
(go to chapter 6)