Max is finally home in Madison, but the magical mayhem is just beginning in this conclusion to the hilarious trilogy that started with Bad Unicorn and Fluff Dragon , which Publishers Weekly called “deviously enjoyable.” After saving an entire world—three, actually—it’s no wonder Max can’t seem to get settled back home in Madison, where the most daunting threat is ending up in remedial gym if he can’t climb a rope fast enough. Then a new kid named Wayne rescues Max from the school bullies, and a new option for adventure appears. Wayne says he’s from the magical world, the Magrus, and that Max is needed there. He can go back and be the powerful wizard of his dreams! But when Max opens a portal between the two worlds, he finds out that things are not what they seem. A powerful storm starts turning the residents of Madison into monsters and Max's friends into characters out of an online game. Then Max learns that the Maelshadow, a being of pure evil, plans to use the portal to invade the planet and make it his own. Can Max and his motley crew put a stop to his plans? Or has this spellcaster’s luck finally run out? Platte Clark shares his first name with the midwestern Platte River, which he’s been told means “wide and shallow.” He nonetheless graduated cum laude with a BS in Philosophy and an MS in English, and lives with his wife and seven children in American Fork, Utah. Good Ogre CHAPTER ONE RETURN OF THE CONQUERING HERO MAX STARED AT THE OBJECT of dread hanging in front of him and realized there was nothing to do but face it. It was bad enough that Parkside Middle School’s husky-sized PE shorts had remained unchanged and out of fashion since 1976, but now everyone was staring at him too. And that included the older kids. From Max’s perspective it looked as if the entire ninth grade were sitting in the bleachers, watching him. Kids with actual facial hair were giving him the eye. “Spencer, Max,” a deep voice grumbled for the second time. A hush settled over the gym as Max finally raised his hand. “Here.” Coach Mattson put his clipboard aside and raised his whistle to his mouth. He wore his United States Marine Corps T-shirt and was probably the only guy in the world trained to use a dodgeball ball as a deadly weapon. “On my mark,” he grunted through clenched teeth. Max slowly stepped forward, craning his neck in an effort to see how high the rope stretched. It was the first day of the new school year, and how Max performed on the rope climb would determine his fate. He’d either be going into regular PE (where they played games that involved actual score keeping), or remedial PE (where Coach Mattson ran his special military-inspired torture routines). Max had heard the whispered tales of woe that came from remedial PE: pain, humiliation, and guaranteed barfing. Max really, really wanted to be in regular PE, but if there was one exercise he was especially bad at, it was the rope climb. Max looked at the students in the bleachers and the line of others waiting impatiently behind him. Maybe he could fake a seizure? Only he wasn’t a particularly good actor, and if he got it wrong, it would just make things worse. Everyone knew you could only play the seizure card once, so you had to make it count. “Come on, Max, you can do it!” a familiar voice cried out. It was Dirk, his oldest and best friend. Dirk was the kind of kid who ate nothing but junk food and still managed to scuttle up the rope like gravity had left the building. He was also the fastest runner in the entire school, which was a good thing given his tendency to say things that made people want to kick him—even girls. “Yo, don’t break it, Spencer!” another voice shouted, and behind it came a chorus of cackles. That voice belonged to Ricky “the Kraken” Reynolds, and he was about as scary a kid as you could imagine. Undefeated as a wrestler, he’d gained his nickname for all the bones he “cracked” on the mat. It also gave him the kind of reputation perfect for bullying. But Max had seen something even more terrifying when the Kraken had been transformed into something else—a hulking beast with red skin and glowing eyes. That had been in a different time and in a different world, but the memory remained. Max jumped for the rope, and the burning in his arms began much too quickly. He struggled to pull himself up, and he imagined he looked like a fish flopping around at the end of a fishing line. Thankfully he managed to find the big knot at the bottom with his feet. “Hey, Spencer, you’re supposed to go up!” another wrestler called out. There were more laughs. “Yeah, even I got higher than that!” a squeaky voice followed. It was Melvin Jenkins, head of the Live Action Role-Playing group, or LARPers. They dressed up as fantasy characters and ran around with cardboard swords and threw tennis balls as spells. Online gaming was different—your character had truly heroic abilities. LARPers simply ran around and pretended to do thi