Read Ravenspell Book 2: The Wizard of Ooze for Free Online

above the pool and began to sing a song that had no words, only notes, raw and powerful. A small wind rattled the reeds above them, and the ground trembled. The sky went inky, and a heavy silence enveloped the little clearing as Lady Blackpool’s voice fell silent.
    Slowly a vision took form in the air all around them.
    Ben had seen this kind of magic before, in Nightwing’s lair, and he wondered if it was an evil spell that Lady Blackpool had cast.
    No, he decided, it wasn’t an evil spell. Lady Blackpool didn’t seem particularly evil. Maybe there was just power, raw power, and you could use it for evil or good. Like a shovel, Ben thought. You could use it to plant a garden, or you could use it to bash in the neighbor’s jack-o’-lanterns on Halloween night. But the shovel wasn’t evil or good. It was just there.
    In the vision Lady Blackwell created, Ben found himself in a shadowed cave, as dark as a tomb. At first, he didn’t see much at all, but as his eyes adjusted, he saw a great worm sticking out of a dirt clod. The air around the worm felt heavy and suffocating, thick with sulfur, and he could feel the unnatural heat in the cave, as hot as a barbecue.
    The great worm lay flaccid, as if his energy were spent.
    The worm was huge, Ben decided. He was easily as long as a cobra, and in the dark, his skin looked as black as basalt. Ben didn’t know what kind of worm he was.
    He might even be an Alaskan bull worm, Ben thought, nearly witless with terror.
    Horrible creatures crouched around the worm, like fat little dolls made from mud. Some looked like the Pillsbury doughboy, only crueler and more savage in the face. A couple of these ambled about, carrying spears made from sharpened twigs. Some of the creatures looked like spiders with oat straw for legs, while others coiled about like snakes.
    Monsters.
    They didn’t seem to see Ben. It was almost as if he were invisible.
    Of course, Ben realized. That’s why Lady Blackpool warned us to be quiet. They won’t know that we’re here unless we make some noise!
    Aside from the sleeping worm and his evil little guards, there wasn’t much to see. Ben heard singing behind him.
Let us burrow; let us delve,
Digging deep like little elves . . .
    Ben turned and found that it looked as if he were standing inside the worm’s lair. He could walk around inside the vision. Lady Blackpool had already gone to investigate the singing, and she stood at the mouth of a crevasse, peering down into a deep pit.
    An army of mice was marching into the pit, singing as they went. Most walked in a trance, as if hypnotized. But some were obviously dead, their flesh rotting off, their hair falling out. Bones and teeth showed naked white, and the stench of decay filled the cave.
    Other mice were crawling upward, bearing stones and dirt in their paws. Steamy vapors rose from the heart of the pit.
    Down at the bottom, half a mile in the distance, Ben heard tiny paws scratching, millions of them, and the zombie mice sang:
Beneath the soil, ’neath the stones,
Beneath the earth’s very bones.
Picking the ground, like a sore,
Till we reach the molten core.
When we strike it, ash will rise,
Roaring like a cloud of flies.
    Ben realized that he was peering down the throat of a deep volcano.
    Lady Blackpool gazed down, an angry furrow to her brow, while Amber merely wept at the sight of so many mice in the clutches of evil. Bushmaster the vole pushed in, gripping his little spear as if he wanted to go to war.
    Ben felt something poke him in the back, and Thorn whispered, “Pssst. Let me see!”
    “Shhh . . .” Lady Blackpool whispered much more softly.
    But the damage had already been done.
    Ben hadn’t heard the great worm waken, but awaken he had. The first announcement of it was when something slimy jolted up from the ground and suddenly wrapped around Ben’s ankles.

Chapter 6
    IN THE CLUTCHES OF EVIL
    I don’t mind being in the clutches of evil so much,
    but I do hate the slime trail it