G. Lippert - JAMES POTTER AND THE VAULT OF DESTINIES

He peered up at Zane. The blonde boy looked down at him. Slowly, his eyebrows rose up onto his forehead as his eyes widened.

Ralph's knees buckled slightly. In a strained voice, he said, "This means you can get off my shoulders now, right?"

"What do you three want?" an older Werewolf boy called from the high portico of Ares Mansion as James, Zane and Ralph approached. James recognized the speaker as Clayton Altaire, the captain of the Werewolf Clutch team.

"Oh, we're just here to bask in your glory for a minute," Zane replied from the footpath that circled Victory Hill. "Don't pay any attention to us."

Altaire scowled at them suspiciously. "What's that you got in the bag, then?"

"Oh, this?" James asked, his face reddening. He looked down at the black velvet bag in his right hand. "It's nothing. Just, er…"

"It's his Technomancy homework," Ralph volunteered. "Totally dangerous stuff. Strictly experimental magic. I wouldn't even look directly at it if I was you."

Altaire nodded skeptically toward Zane. "I know you, Walker. If you're trying to prank us…"

"Me?" Zane asked, his face a mask of wounded innocence. "Never! Why, I'll have you know that this here is James Potter! His brother is Albus, one of your Werewolf brethren. We'd never do anything to cause any trouble for little ol' Al, would we fellas?" He looked back and forth between James and Ralph, who nodded silently.

"Albus," Altaire smirked. "Yeah, our little Cornelius. I'll tell him you 'popped in for a chat'." He turned and walked into the shadow of the doorway, chuckling to himself.

"Yeah, you do that, stump-head," Zane muttered, rolling his eyes. He turned to James. "All right, come on. Let's see if it fits."

"I don't like having that thing out in broad daylight," Ralph said, following closely as James and Zane angled toward the corner of Ares Mansion, passing a rather large bronze statue of a fiercely snarling werewolf with blank amber eyes embedded into its face. James knew that the statue had been a gift from an alumnus, erected some ten years ago. Albus had told him that the members of the Werewolf Clutchcudgel team ritualistically rubbed the statue's snarling muzzle on every game day as they made their way to Pepperpock Down. James shuddered as he passed before the glinting bronze figure, not liking that frozen, toothy growl.

As the three approached the cornerstone of the house's permanent foundation, James saw that it was quite a large block of solid granite. At the very top of it, engraved right up to the edge, was a squat U-shape.

"It'll only take a second, Ralph," James said, feeling rather nervous himself. "We just need to see if it's the same shape. If the horseshoe is the dimensional key, then this could be the keyhole. If it's not, then we'll just take it back and hide it under the Warping Willow again."

Ralph gulped. "You mean if it fits, we're going to go through into the World Between the Worlds right now ?"

"Relax, Ralphinator," Zane hissed impatiently. "We're just going to see if it works. We'll come back later for our big entrance if all goes as planned."

Glancing around to assure no one was watching, James slipped the silver horseshoe from its bag. The three boys crowded around the cornerstone as he held it up next to the engraved shape.

"Well," Ralph said hesitantly, "it fits… a little."

"The engraved shape's too short," Zane said, shaking his head. "The top part's cut off."

James peered at the horseshoe as he held it up against the engraved U-shape. "The bottom bit fits perfectly," he agreed. "It's almost like the top half of the cornerstone is missing."

"That makes sense," Zane said. "None of the buildings are on their original foundations. Every time there's a new Clutchcudgel tournament winner, the houses swap around. I bet nobody even remembers which house was originally built on this foundation."

"So if we can figure out which house's cornerstone shows the top half of the horseshoe," Ralph ventured, "then we'll know where the entrance to the Nexus Curtain is, right?"

"Maybe," James said, slipping the horseshoe back into its velvet bag. "But I have a feeling that the only way the dimensional key will work is if we get the right house onto the right foundation."

Zane shrugged optimistically. "That's easy! Like Ralph said, we just need to find out which house has the rest of the horseshoe on its cornerstone and then make sure that that house wins the Clutch tourney. If we're lucky, it'll be Hermes Mansion. We Zombies are up for a win this year. I can feel it."

James slumped as a sinking certainty settled over him. He shook his head slowly.

"I don't think," he said morosely, "that it's going to be Hermes Mansion."

"Wow," Ralph said a short time later as the three boys stood in the bushes in front of Bigfoot House. "How'd you know?"

"Couldn't say," James answered with a sigh. "It just makes a certain kind of backward sense, doesn't it?"

Zane nodded firmly, his lips pressed into a tight line as he stared down at the cornerstone of Apollo Mansion. Sure enough, the bottom edge of the stone showed the twin markings of the top of the silver horseshoe. "So," he said heartily, still nodding, "in order to open the Nexus Curtain and potentially prove the innocence of our good friend Petra Morganstern, the worst Clutch team in a decade has to win the tournament against the best Cl utch team in a decade. Is that about it? Do I have this straight?"

"I'm afraid so," James answered dourly.

Zane nodded some more. "Well, then," he said, "one thing above all else is absolutely certain."

"What's that?" Ralph asked, a little hesitantly.

Zane looked gravely at both James and Ralph and then answered, "You're gonna need a bigger Gauntlet."

Over the following weeks, James approached Team Bigfoot's Clutch magic practices with renewed vigor. They did indeed expand the Gauntlet, adding a gyroscopic flight pad section where players could mount a skrim and fly in place with simulated wind, turns, and, most important of all, attacking clockwork opponents. Using this, players practiced Artis Decerto in flight, learning to perform midair flips, barrel rolls, horizontal leans, and an entirely new maneuver, known as the Drop, in which a player would fall flat onto the length of their skrim, their fingers curled over the front edge, reducing their target area and wind resistance, and effectively transforming themselves into missiles. In this posture, the player was able to use his or her skrim as a shield, deflecting spells by pulling the leading edge upwards, forcing the spells to bounce off the bottom.

"Wow!" Gobbins cheered as Jazmine performed an impressive dropping barrel roll through a group of clockwork Bullies, complete with mechanical Cudgels. "Way to thread the needle, Jaz!"

"I gotta admit, James," Norrick said, shaking his head, "I wasn't buying into this whole Artis Decerto thing at first. But between the new magic we've been practicing and these crazy new moves, I think we might just have a chance to get into the tournament."

"Get into it nothing," Wentworth exclaimed, his eyes boggling behind his huge glasses. "We've got a chance to win that baby! Especially now that the Pixies and Igors have been knocked out of the playoffs! It's down to the Werewolves, Vampires, Zombies and us! And we haven't even started using any of these new moves yet!"