“No!” Rachel shouted, struggling against her paralysis. “We can’t let him get away, Fort! Use your magic!”

Fort concentrated, and his hands glowed green at his side as a massive teleportation circle opened right above the dragon, covering the tunnel to the portal and leading right back to Dragon’s Teeth. There was nowhere for the Old One to go, as Fort extended the circle to just inches away from the walls on each side. At his size, there was just no way the dragon could get past it.

The Old One paused in midair, then shrank to the size of a house fly and flew through the gap between the wall and portal.

“NO!” Rachel shouted, but it was already too late. Their paralysis once again faded, and there could only be one reason why: The Old One had made it to Earth.

“We need to get after it!” Rachel shouted. “There’s no time to waste!”

“We’re not going anywhere until my father’s okay!” Fort shouted at her.

“What?” Rachel said. “Think about what that dragon can do! And there’s a teleportation circle still opened to the school, from where we came in!”

“He’s okay to move,” Jia told Fort. “I don’t know what’s keeping him unconscious, but he seems fine physically. We won’t hurt him if we take him with us.”

Fort gritted his teeth. He didn’t like it, but he also didn’t want to stay in this dimension another second, especially with the Old Ones on their way. He leaned down to pick up his father, and Jia helped from the other side. Together, they lifted him up and held him between them.

As soon as they had him, Fort opened a teleportation circle vertically in front of them, one that emerged just inches below the portal, set diagonally to shoot them out to the stone floor beyond.

“Because the portal is in midair, you’re going to need to run through the circle here,” he told the others. “Your momentum will take you through the portal, but be careful how you—”

Rachel didn’t bother listening to the rest, and instead leaped through the circle. Gabriel’s eyes flickered in multiple directions, but when he saw Fort waiting for him, he nodded and leaped through next.

A moment later, his upside-down hands extended back through the teleportation circle at the top. “Hand him to me!” Gabriel shouted, and Fort and Jia passed his father into Gabriel’s arms. The older boy lifted Fort’s father through the portal, leaving it clear for them to follow.

Once they were all back in the cavern below the old Oppenheimer School, Fort immediately closed the teleportation circle beneath them. He started to do the same to the dimensional portal, then stopped.