Creation Mage 7

War Mage Academy 7

Dante King

Copyright © 2021 by Dante King

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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Contents

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

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Immortal Swordslinger

Bone Lord

Chapter 1

It was a week after Yuletide and the Chaosbane Ranch looked like the bastard lovechild of an Inuit village and Woodstock. Blatantly magical tents had sprung up around the enormous log cabin mansion like fungi clustering around a fallen tree, their numerous and different shades and patterns standing out vividly against the snow that still blanketed the expansive lawns.

These tents had been pitched by the new arrivals that had begun to trickle, and then to flood, onto the Chaosbane family’s property a few days after we had celebrated the cutting of the Yule Log.

“Friends and acquaintances, well-wishers, and folk empathetic to our cause and point of view,” Reginald Chaosbane, the Headmaster of the Mazirian Academy, had replied to me when I had asked him who the fuck was camping out on the lawn.

“Not squatters?” I asked.

“No, not squatters,” the Headmaster had assured me, lighting up something that looked like a cigar but smelled like marijuana dipped in gasoline. “They are sympathizers to our cause. Sympathizers to the cause that your parents, the jolly old Twin Spirits, put into action roughly three decades ago, the one that your father and mother began hypothesizing while they were still students at the Mazirian Academy.”

I had looked out over the tents, watching the inhabitants getting up and performing their morning ablutions. One tent, an elaborate confection of silks, looked like it was home to a whole family of djinnis. Another looked like nothing more than a basic, miniaturized bridge with rough hessian cloth hanging across the arch. As I watched, a troll emerged from under the crudely constructed bridge, stretched, and scratched his ass with a look of deep concentration over his craggy face.

“You can take the troll out from under the bridge,” Reginald Chaosbane said reflectively as he breathed out a plume of marshmallow scented blue smoke, “but you can’t take the bridge out from over the troll.”

I wasn’t sure if that was the most profound philosophical insight I had ever heard or if it made absolutely no sense—it was hard to define the difference with Headmaster Chaosbane.

“You call them sympathizers to the cause,” I said slowly. “But that just means they’re rebels, doesn’t it, sir?”

Reginald looked sideways at me and grinned through another cloud of smoke.

“Depends on who you ask, Mr. Mauler,” he said.

“Well, let’s just say you were to ask the Arcane Council…” I said.

“Oh, the Arcane Council, yes, in that case,” Reginald said, motioning toward the campers with his cigar, “what we have here are a big old bunch of rebels.”

That had been a few days after Yuletide. Now, here we were only a week out from that insane holiday I had shared with the Chaosbane clan, and the grounds surrounding the Chaosbane’s family seat were filled with these rebels.

“The Headmaster has been sober at some point since Yuletide, right?” I asked Leah Chaosbane, while the two of us sat out on the porch of the Chaosbane ranch house and looked out at the myriad people. It was early in the day and the two of us were nursing a couple of mugs of good, strong Auntie Brewster’s Brain-Buzz Espresso.

“Sobriety is all a matter of perspective, isn’t it?” Leah said.

I changed tact. “What I mean is that the man realizes that this ranch is practically right under the noses of the Arcane Council in Manafell, doesn’t he? He is aware that you could stand on the battlements of the Castle of Ascendance and almost see this place?”

“Of course,” Leah said, twirling a loose strand of her bubble-gum pink hair around one long finger.

“And he’s not worried that the Arcane Council might wonder why the circus has suddenly come to town?” I gestured at the plethora of tents that could be seen from the porch.

“That lad might be reckless at times,” came a crusty voice from behind us, letting loose one of the world’s great understatements, “but he ain’t as dumb as all that.”

It was Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock, the ancient and grouchy patriarch who ruled the Chaosbane clan. He was hobbling along on his vector stick and wearing the hand-knitted hat that he was never without.

“It’s true,” Leah said. “He was born at night, but not last night. If you’re worried that he might be being a little obvious with this little gathering of rebels, then fear not. He knows exactly what he is doing, honey-kitten.”

“It might be tough for you, being an Earthling and all,” Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock said, “to see things from the Arcane Council’s point of view. Cripes, it’s hard for most right-thinking folk to see anything from their point of view, really, what with their heads being buried so far up their own asses!”

“What you have to realize though, Justin,” Leah said soothingly, “is that the Arcane Council prides itself on its reputation for being mysterious. For wrapping themselves up in enigmas and secrets and lies like an old whore might clad herself in lace and pearls and flowery perfume.”

“In short,” I said, “Headmaster Chaosbane is banking on them expecting us to be just as concerned about being clandestine as they themselves would be?”

Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock snapped his fingers together and pointed at me. “That’s just it, young fellow. The fact is that we here at the Chaosbane Ranch have always had a pretty lenient open-door policy when it comes to guests and what those guests are allowed to get up to on our lands.”

“Except the Flamewalkers, Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock,” Leah reminded the old man absently, magicking one of her thin black cigarettes from out of nowhere and lighting it with a blown kiss.

“Well, obviously, that rule doesn’t apply to the fucking Flamewalkers,” Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock scoffed. “The stuck-up buggers wouldn’t accept an invitation here even if I was drunk enough to extend one their way! Besides, I’d rather circumcise myself with a rusty bread knife than put myself through three minutes of company with any of those that live over yonder!”

The Chaosbane and the Flamewalker families had long been neighbors out there on the outskirts of the city of Manafell. As far as I could tell, they had been pissing each other off for generations, almost to the point of it being a habit or a tradition.

I had been given a taste of this when we had first arrived on the sled that had taken us through the wormhole. Reginald had hovered over the Flamewalker estate and allowed the magical bulls that pulled the sled to destroy their neighbor’s lawn and garden furniture with their monstrous turds.

“My point is,” Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock said, “is that even if the Arcane Council are having a bit of a sticky beak at what we’re up to here, they’re going to assume that it’s just some cracked party or reunion of ours. They can’t know how many fucking Chaosbanes there are floating about out there.”

“Why?” I asked.

Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock cocked a wiry eyebrow at me. “Because even I don’t fucking know how many there are, Mauler.”

He maneuvered himself stiffly over to a free chair and lowered himself into it with a great sigh and screeching expulsion of gas from his backside.

I wrinkled my nose as the stench of cabbage and eggs wafted over Leah and me.

“Great Granddaddy,” Leah said reprovingly, “that was fucking foul.”

“Hm, it was a bit, wasn’t it?” the old man said, looking rather pleased with himself.

While I tried not to throw up, I looked out over the rolling, snow-covered grounds. Not too far away from the ranch house, I could see three of my closest companions standing out in the field and enjoying a little magical sparring practice.

Cecilia Chillgrave, aristocratic Elven Frost Mage and hot-ass blonde, was standing barefoot in the snow. She was, quite literally, in her element, which explained why it was her who was taking on Janet Thunderstone and Alura, the Gemstone Elemental princess.

As I watched and attempted to distract myself from the brassica-rich miasma that had enveloped the porch, Janet let loose with some of her Storm Magic. With her hands held out, she used her Chain Lightning spell to send miniature lightning bolts zapping toward her best friend, Cecilia.

Cecilia rolled to one side lithely, narrowly avoiding a few little bolts that kicked snow up from the lawn in powdery tufts. As she was doing this, Alura made her move and fired a weakened version of her Light Beam spell at the Frost Mage.

Cecilia rolled to her feet and made an icy wall materialize out of nowhere, deflecting the beam of energy up into the sky. She then countered with an attack of her own, firing a spray of needle-sharp icicles at Janet before the Storm Mage could let fly another attack. The Ice Shards, though clearly watered down by Cecilia so as not to hurt Janet too much, shot through the air.

A second before they connected with the daughter of Idman Thunderstone, Alura summoned a Crystal Pup—a crystalline canine-like creature that could be sicced on those whom she wished considerable harm—into being. The creature was impervious to basic ranged weapons like crossbows and throwing knives, but not so with magical attacks. At Alura’s bidding, the Crystal Pup leapt in front of Janet and bore the brunt of the Frost Spell, shattering into pieces.

“Nicely done,” I heard Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock say gruffly from behind me.

The three women untensed and came together, congratulating one another.

We had been sparring with each other most days after Yuletide — to get back into the mentality of War Mages, and to keep our skills sharp.

There was a definite feeling of anticipation in the air on the Chaosbane Ranch, a feeling which was only heightened by the arrival of all these other mages who had apparently been summoned by Reginald Chaosbane. There was an atmosphere of expectancy that no one voiced but everyone felt.

There was something momentous in the works, that much was obvious. Something that was bound to be as full of excitement as it was full of danger.

Thinking that I wouldn’t mind another chat with the Headmaster of the Mazirian Academy, I got to my feet and drained my coffee.

“Just going to go and take a stroll and see if I can find the Headmaster,” I said.

I passed Igor and Mort Chaosbane walking up the stairs to the porch as I descended them. The three of us exchanged nods. Truth to tell, Mort and I exchanged nods of greeting, while Igor, the sclera of his eyes more red than white, merely giggled to himself and waggled his flyaway mustache.

Igor Chaosbane was a shabby Rune Mystic, in whose body were doubtless all the chemical ingredients needed to build a biological weapon of mass destruction. It might have been early morning for most people, but for Igor, it was probably the pinnacle of just another night out on the tiles.

Mort, lanky and pale and dressed in plain brown robes that reminded me of a Franciscan monk, was helping his cousin up the steps with a hand under his elbow. The man looked albino to me and sported a pair of the most hideously incredible pale blonde mutton chop side whiskers that I had ever seen in the flesh. They were an incongruous touch for a man who was famed for being one of the most feared and successful bounty hunters in all the land.

I walked away from the ranch house and started making a lazy circuit of the main Chaosbane compound. It was another quintessential winter’s day. The fresh snow squeaked under my feet as I walked, and the sun glittered off the icicles hanging from the branches of the trees. A couple of robins flitted around in a cheerful fashion, almost as if they were auditioning for the festive bird of the year competition.

All around me, the tent-dwelling rebels were stirring. More than a few were awake and practicing their spellwork: dueling, wrestling, or just blowing shit up. I caught sight of my Halfling pal, Nigel Windmaker sitting outside one of the enormous barns with Madame Xel and Odette Scaleblade.

There was a sudden bellowing noise, a cry of “Oh, fuck!” and a sudden explosion of timber planking as something crashed through the side of the barn.

I stopped walking, pausing to make sure that nothing untoward was going down.

Chubbs, the rotund werewolf ranch-hand, with whom Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock enjoyed a similar relationship as Tywin and Tyrion Lannister did, picked himself up out of the splintered remains of the wall he had just been catapulted through. He staggered a bit, went to pick up the cowboy hat that lay a few feet away in the snow, and fell over.

“Are you all right, friend?” came a familiar voice from out of the shattered section of the barn that Chubbs had just been propelled through.

Rick Hammersmith, Earth Elemental, fraternity brother, and forger extraordinaire, ducked out through the hole with some difficulty. He was dressed in his usual grass skirt and plaited leather and grass belt, and not much else. Like Cecilia, it didn’t appear that Rick felt the cold, though whether that was because he was an Earth Elemental or simply because he was as tough as a dime steak I didn’t know for sure. His dreadlocks cascaded around his big, amiable face, which was currently creased with concern as he surveyed the dazed Chubbs.

“I told you it was a fool’s errand to try and shoe those big-ass bulls, friend,” he said. He lumbered over and pulled the tubby werewolf to his feet. “Those big bastards don’t need footwear.”

I carried on my walk, leaving my friends to it, my eyes peeled for any sign of the Headmaster.

After rounding a little copse of pines, I stumbled across a tent pitched in the lee of a large overhanging boulder. Outside sat two figures that I dimly recognized, enjoying the warmth given off by a bright lime-green fire. After a couple of moments, I realized that they were Iowyn, a Storm Elemental, and Kryn, a Wind Elemental. With all the crazy shit that me and my closest friends and companions had been caught up in over the past few months, I had not seen either of these women for quite a long time, but I remembered them well enough from my first days at the Academy and during our classes and time spent around the Academy’s fantastic pool area.

Iowyn was covered in thick and luxurious blue fur. It looked like the fur you might see on an otter, but it moved more like the fur on a cat. I still, just as I had on the very first day that I had met her, found myself wanting to run a hand through it—around her ass or up her thigh, for preference—to see what it felt like. Purely to satisfy my scientific curiosity, of course.

Kryn, the Wind Elemental, had green skin that looked like silky, super fine moss. It glistened as she moved in the bright light of the sun that sat just above the eastern horizon.

Both the women saw me as I rounded the copse of trees and waved at me.

“Justin!” Iowyn called in a husky voice that sounded like whiskey tasted. “What are you up to?”

“Long time no see,” Kryn piped, flashing me a smile that I could see even from where I stood.

“Come on over here and tell us your news!” Iowyn called to me, her midnight blue eyes flashing.

I waved apologetically back and yelled, “Sorry, I’m on a bit of a mission. Got to see the Headmaster! Raincheck?”

The girls made little sounds of disappointment and waved at me as I moved on, heading toward the fenceline. Just before I got out of earshot, Kryn called to me. I turned and the Wind Elemental ripped her jacket open to reveal a pair of pert, green tits.

“Your loss, Justin!” she cried good-naturedly and then covered up. She and Iowyn dissolved into a fit of giggles as only females can and cast brazen looks in my direction.

I really didn’t know what to say to that so, with a twinge of regret at leaving, I waved again and carried on my way.

There had, now that I thought about it, been quite a lot of that sort of thing ever since I had returned from the Castle of Ascendance.

It had been common knowledge amongst our immediate circle that I had been on somewhat of a hiatus from fucking and creating spells, up until very recently. After collecting the relics hidden away at the Castle of Ascendance, and having Gertrude use them to open up fresh slots in my spellbook, I now had four slots open to me. Four slots that were just waiting to be filled.

Word, as it so easily does, had gotten around. It seemed like all my close female acquaintances, as well as some like Kryn and Iowyn whom I did not know as intimately, were clamoring to help me fill them. I must have seen all sorts of shapes, sizes, and colors of flashed asses and bared breasts over the past week. The result of so much exposure to so many hot half-naked women was beginning to become apparent.

I was turning into a regular old horndog, unable to chat or look at a woman without quietly fantasizing about what they might be like in the sack.

I walked along the fenceline, trying to clear the mental image of Kryn’s tasty titties from out of my mind, with little to no success.

The thing was, it wasn’t as if I couldn’t have had sex with a whole cast of women. They were quite literally lining up. Aunt Ruth, a no-nonsense milfy member of the Chaosbane clan, had actually had to shoo away a couple of dwarven women who had tried tunneling into the ranch house cellar.

This was saying something for the keenness of the dwarves, as dwarf women, despite what modern fantasy had led me to believe, did not have beards and were not prone to mining or hoarding gold. They were actually stunning. Built along the lines of Amazonian warriors, with muscular backs and large arms, they looked like they could get hold of a man and never let him free again—as if any right-minded man would have wanted to escape.

My ladies had picked up on my self-imposed abstinence and had made a game of it by flashing me, taunting me, and generally trying to break down my usually brittle self-control and having me fuck them whenever and wherever they could.

In stark contrast to my previous sex-laden adventures, I hadn’t actually slept with any of my girls since opening the four fresh slots. The reason for this was a fairly simple one, I supposed: I was ensnared and tangled up in indecision.

Which girls?

What kinds of spells did I want to create?

There were more things to consider now than simply who I fancied knocking boots with. Each fuck, each climax, held the possibility of making me a stronger and more versatile mage. Not to mention the fact that the female participant also had a chance of either upgrading an existing spell or learning a new one altogether.

What made my situation all the more difficult was that my father had divulged to me something interesting about my abilities. I could actually guide the type of spell my powers would create. How would I do this? By fucking the chosen woman in a particular way or in a particular place or, even, at a specific tempo.

That shit was crazy! I mean, sex, of all things, was meant to be one of those impulsive, animal exercises in which thinking could be cast aside.

I shook my head and forced my feet onward. Sex was always on my mind, but I had something more important, at least for the moment. I needed to find out the next step in Reginald Chaosbane’s grand design.

I crested the gentle slope and looked down at the ranch below. A voice hailed me. It was Damien Davis, my Fire Mage buddy and a Los Angeles native who had spent most of his life on the wrong side of the tracks. He was slogging his way up the slope followed by Enwyn Emberskull, who was managing the incline a little more easily. Damien was battling a five-day hangover, which would strip most men of their usual fitness.

Enwyn and Damien were Fire Mages, and the snow under their feet wasn’t just compressing, but also melting in their wake.

“Damien!” I said jovially, slapping my friend on the shoulder as he reached the top of the slope and stood panting with his hands on his knees. “You’re looking like a particularly messy sack full of assholes today.”

Damien took a deep breath. “And you might be as pretty as a pumpkin, but you’ve only got half the wits of one.”

I laughed at that.

“What’s up?” I asked. “Were you two looking for me?”

Enwyn, looking as sexy and put together as usual, had been rolling her eyes at the two of us bantering. She took off her spectacles and polished them. She even managed to do that in a way that stirred my blood, looking almost like a secretary out of one of those cheesy porno films.

“Reginald is addressing the gathered men and women who have heeded his call and flocked here,” she told me succinctly, replacing her spectacles on her dainty nose.

“I was just looking for him,” I said. “Wanted to know the next step in this grand plan of his—if there is a grand plan.”

Enwyn held out her hand. “Come with me, and I’ll take you to him. You’ll have your questions answered while he is addressing everyone else.”

We found Reginald Chaosbane, famous wastrel and phenomenally powerful Chaos Mage, standing on top of the roof of the ranch house’s front porch. Damien, Enwyn, and I climbed up into the branches of a nearby pine tree and sat on one of its limbs. From this vantage point, we could easily see over the heads of the large gathering of mages pooled around the porch. The rest of the Chaosbane clan were sitting on the porch, looking out over the crowd. I caught eyes with Leah, and she blew me a kiss.

There was no open window behind Reginald Chaosbane. No tracks in the snow that lay across the roof like a crisp white blanket. It looked like he had just dropped from the sky and landed there. Or popped out of the ether.

Despite knowing the Headmaster for about as long I had been mixed up in this crazy and fantastic world, ever since Enwyn had brought me through the door that led from the ruin of my uncle’s bookshop into a world in which magic was real, he was still an enigma.

I felt like most people only ever got to see what lay on the surface of the man. He was, more than likely, completely insane. But if he was mad, it was a madness of such rarity that he was simply approaching extreme genius from another direction.

Today, he was dressed in a flamboyant velvet frock coat, tarnished boots, and sporting his usual effortlessly immaculate facial hair. Reginald Chaosbane cut a figure that was somewhere between vagabond and viscount, gypsy and general. Just as he approached genius from an unconventional way, so he somehow looked ridiculously stylish by simply acting like he had no style whatsoever.

“Good morning, mates,” he called from his elevated perch, wobbling gently at the edge of the roof, “and thank you all for coming when I sent out my sweet siren song.”

“I’ve heard you singing in a bar, Reggie!” yelled an aquamarine-skinned woman with damp black hair and piercing blue eyes. I thought she might actually be a Siren. “And you can take it from me that you ain’t possessed of the voice of no Siren!”

There was some laughter from the crowd, but most of the faces were looking intently at the Headmaster.

“Quite, quite,” Reginald said, waving his hands around his head and showing off some lace cuffs that would have looked completely ridiculous on anyone else. “That as it may, I would still like to extend my humble gratitude to all of you who have come here.”

He trailed off and swept the crowd with those clever, liquid black eyes.

The atmosphere altered imperceptibly then. It was subtle, but the carnival air that was usually synonymous with one of Reginald Chaosbane’s public addresses was conspicuously absent. It reminded me of attending a sporting match, when the team you support is about to hit a buzzer-beater or score a touchdown, and you and the thousands upon thousands of your fellow fans all draw in your breath at the same time—an involuntary and irresistible herd response to an external stimulus.

It was like that then, as the Headmaster surveyed us all. Everyone’s attention sharpened, dialing in on the man’s face, on his lips. Waiting for the words that might very well dictate all our futures.

I had been expecting some of Reginald’s usually flowery and elaborate rhetoric, so I was taken aback by the bluntness of his address now. Enwyn stiffened at my side and moved a little closer to me on the branch. Damien’s face, as I glanced sideways at him where he sat on my other side, was a mask of concentration.

“It is time for action,” the Headmaster said. “It is time for everyone, for all of us, I mean, mates, to go to a place where we can hide out, lay low, and gather our team for the war with the Arcane Council that will soon come to a head.”

The silence that followed this proclamation was of the ringing, could-hear-a-fly-fart variety. Nobody moved. Nobody so much as blinked.

“I know, I know,” Reginald continued with a wry smile, “many of you have heard me talking about this day for years. For all of you here, the stance, maybe, that we took up all those years ago has become slightly less real with the passing of old father time. However, what happens next was always as inevitable as gravity. As inevitable as something that is thrown having to fall back to earth.”

“But where are we going to hold up, Chaosbane?” someone called from out of the crowd. “Where can we hope to evade the spies and assassins of the Arcane Council?”

“Yeah!” someone else yelled—a fairly feeble and cracked old voice. “We all know that the Arcane Council delight in black, underhanded work. They trick and they lie and deceive. They put a damn glamor on most of the population, for gods’ sake!”

Reginald Chaosbane raised his hands for quiet, and the irate voices died.

“I agree entirely,” he said. “There can be no depths to which these unwholesome fuckers will not sink! I know that better than most, being in the inner circle of Istrea and Zenidor when they fell. That is why I am telling you that we will be taking shelter in none other than the Stronghold of the Twin Spirits.”

There was a gasp, which cut through the crowd like a blowtorch through a block of butter. Every eye went in the direction of said gasp. Toward Mallory Entwistle.

“But… But I thought that had been lost, surely!” she said.

A dull murmur of disbelief had started up. People were looking wide-eyed from one to another. I saw though, that it was the sort of shock that was built on hope rather than despair.

“Not lost, no,” Reginald Chaosbane said, running a finger thoughtfully along his mustache and kicking a lump of snow off the edge of the roof. There was a squawk as Igor, who had stuck his head out at precisely the wrong moment, took the snow right in the face.

“No, it wasn’t lost,” the Headmaster mused aloud, his voice, though quiet, still audible in the silence. “It was just relocated to some place no one could find it.”

“Well, if no one could find it,” Igor said, spitting snow and wiping ice from the enormous mustache that adorned his upper lip, “how did you find it, cousin?”

“Ah, but who said I found it?” Reginald said. “I’ve just told you that it was hidden. Hidden from all, including me. I’ve been searching for this place, the only place that would provide our side with proper sanctuary, ever since the Void Wars ended.”

“Well, where the dickens is it, then?” Igor said.

There was a dull thwacking sound as Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock hit Igor with his stick and told him that if he kept being a pain in the ass he was going to up and cancel his birth certificate.

“I don't know where to find this place,” Reginald admitted, but strangely, he let loose one of his old grins, “but I know someone who does. I have a feeling that the Stronghold of the Twin Spirits lies somewhere between this world and the world of the dead, in the void between what exists and what doesn’t, but I cannot be sure until I have communicated with the one person who is bound to know: Istrea, the Twin Spirit.”

Suddenly, I saw where this was going and the part that I was going to have to play here. I had been too preoccupied with thinking which spells I should gain by fucking whom to even think about Istrea, the Twin Spirit.

My mother.

“You’re off your fucking head, Chaosbane!” said some astute nymph in the crowd.

“Yes, yes, indubitably, madam,” Reginald said, “but, sometimes, the only reasonable response to the thing that we call ‘the real world’ is to go a little nutty, don’t you think?”

The Headmaster’s eyes snapped up to where I was sitting on the tree limb with Damien and Enwyn.

“I assure you, good people,” he said, in a tone that was all hot molten steel and raw, chaotic magic, “that I will, within a few hours, have the location of the Stronghold of the Twin Spirits. And when I do, the real journey for us will begin. As of now, though, you can take on the very sexy and dashing title of renegades and rebels for yourself.”

The Headmaster spread his arms to encompass all those who stood before him. His coat flapped around him, his dark hair moving like a halo of shadows around his head and face.

“The motherfucker loves theatrics,” Damien said from my left, smiling to himself as he watched one of the greatest mages alive hold his audience spellbound.

“We are going to be labeled as insurgents and anarchists, terrorists and traitors, by those who currently hold the proletariat under their phony spell, but we all know that we are really liberators. We are at war with the Arcane Council, and with all those who would get in the way of us as we seek to achieve our simple goal: to safeguard Magic as we know it, and to save the very Multiverse itself.”

“Nothing like aiming small,” I muttered as the congregation of mages roared and stamped its approval.

Chapter 2

I sat on an uncomfortable stool near, but not too near, the forge of Rick’s magical fold-out smithy. The structure had been a gift to him from his father. I was engulfed by the lung-scorching heat, as I had been the first time that I had set foot in it. It was hot. Hot as a dragon’s heart. I looked over my shoulder, at the lazy snowflakes that fell outside the mouth of the smithy, and wished that I could run out there and make snow angels for the rest of the afternoon.

As Reginald had basked in the applause of his audience, I had slipped down from the tree and gone hunting for Rick. He was not hard to find. People who are built like a vending machine rarely are.

“Rick,” I had said to him. “Rick, it’s time.”

Rick hadn’t said anything. He had just nodded his great slab of a melon once and then led me away, around the back of the ranch house, where no one had been allowed to set up a tent under pain of pain, as promised by Aunt Ruth.

Once there, he pulled out the pocket-sized box, which was in fact a complex magical device that folded out into a fully operational magical forge.

It was an artisan metalworker’s wet dream—full of tongs, hammers, and other things that I couldn’t hope to recognize.

Now, I was sitting, absentmindedly rubbing at the key-shaped brand on my palm that had been an unforeseen souvenir of going through this process when I’d spoken with my dad.

I was brooding on what Mallory Entwistle had once told me—about how my father had cooked up an ever-so-slightly genocidal solution to solving the problem of Universal Magic dying and, apparently, how my mother had come up with a different solution that wasn’t so morally reprehensible.

I wondered what my mother would be like. What pearls of wisdom would she offer? Would she be able to tell me how Reginald Chaosbane could guide his rebel army somewhere safe?

While I was playing the party of Broody McBrooderson, Rick was busy prepping the forge and doing everything required to unlock the white crystal that was my mother’s white staff in disguise.

“Friend,” said the massive Earth Elemental in his subterranean voice, “are you ready to set the soul of your ancestor free?”

It was the same thing he had said to me the last time we had done this. Maybe saying the words was part of the ritual, or maybe Rick was just a man of limited imagination when it came to monologues during moments of extreme importance.

“I’m ready, big man,” I replied.

I handed him the bracelet in which were stored the souls of the three Blade Sisters I had killed during the last War Mage competition that had gone a little sideways and culminated in a few proper, non-regenerational fatalities, not to mention the unearthing of my mother’s crystal and some very strange coke (not that kind of coke, the coke used in forging).

The big Islander had a large crucible set up in one corner of his forge fire. In it was a molten metal that he had told me, last time, was silver with just a splash of platinum and a thimbleful of tungsten. The silver and platinum would, Rick assured me, give me sixty minutes to converse with my ancestor of choice—with Mom. The tungsten would enable me to access her and open the crystal staff.

Just as he had done on the first occasion, Rick dropped the bracelet containing the trapped souls into the crucible of liquid metal. Then, he dipped two fingers into the scorching, flesh-meltingly hot metal after touching his grass and leather belt that was also his vector. When he put his two massive digits in the scalding metal, I winced, regardless of the fact that I had seen him do it before.

“Holy shit, that doesn’t get any easier to watch, man,” I said.

Rick did not answer, being too engrossed in what he was doing. Sweat was rolling down the great slabs of muscle that covered his naked torso. He muttered a few indecipherable words, there was a resounding crack from inside the crucible, and the liquid alloy in the crucible burped up three large bubbles of gas and took on a coppery color.

Rick dipped his metal-covered fingers in a bucket of water by his side. The water spat and steamed. When Rick pulled his sausage-like fingers out, the metal covering them had solidified. With a flex of his hand, the metal cracked off and fell tinkling to the floor of the smithy.

Rick picked up the crucible and poured it into an intricate little mold, in the shape of a key, that he had sitting ready.

For my part, having learned my lesson from last time, I pulled on a thick leather glove that I had resting on my lap.

Once he had poured the last drop of liquid metal into the cast, Rick murmured another unintelligible incantation over the mold, instantly solidifying it. He popped out the key from the mold and dunked it in the bucket of water by his foot. I was expecting it this time and had a glove at the ready, he handed the key easily to me.

The crystal was already out on my lap, plain and beautiful and warm. Even as I held the smoking key in my fingers, looking for where I might slot the thing, the crystal glowed with a sudden intense brilliance.

Rick stumbled back, shielding his eyes, and knocked the bucket of water across the floor. Since I had a crystal on my lap, a blistering hot piece of metal in my clumsy, gloved fingers, and was sitting quite close to a forge fire should I fall into it, I elected to remain still.

My closed eyelids blazed red as the blood in them was lit up by the glowing crystal. When it faded, I opened my eyes and saw that the stone had transformed into a simple white staff.

It was elegant, clean cut and utterly marvelous looking. It was a simple thing, but the word ‘simple’ did not do it justice. It was simple in the same way that a cloud is simple, as sunrise or a tree or the moon is simple.

Simple and completely beyond mortal comprehension.

Not allowing myself to get distracted by the wondrous magical object that I sat across my lap, I ran my eyes over the base of the staff but could not see the key slot.

“The head, friend, the head!” Rick croaked from behind me.

My eyes flicked upward, and I saw that he was right. There was a little keyhole set near the very tip of the staff.

The key slot of my father’s staff had been near the base. Was that a not-so-subtle metaphor for females thinking with their heads while dudes thought with their… other heads?

There was no time to ponder on that. Trying hard not to drop the key in my clumsy fingers, I slipped it into the keyhole and turned it.

And everything went a bright, all-encompassing white.

Long blonde hair like a sheet of shimmering gold. Pale skin that was flushed with the dusky rose of life. Bright blue eyes that cut through me like a couple of liquid lasers.

My mother was beautiful, and it was all I could do to remember to breathe or blink when I saw her for the very first time, standing there in the flesh—or what passed for flesh in the strange place we were inhabiting.

“Hello, Justin,” she said, as if I had simply walked through the door after a day at work, or at college or at kindergarten.

I swallowed.

“Mom…” I said.

“I expect,” my mom said, smiling a smile that made me feel as if my soul had just been bathed in hot chocolate, “that you have a lot of questions. That is unsurprising, but we have to be prudent here, as time is a tricky beast. Even now ten of your minutes have passed outside in the forge. Time is like water: it behaves differently when it comes in contact with different elements and different kinds of magic. One of the unforeseen side-effects of me disguising my staff as a crystal is that time runs quicker here.”

She gestured around the hazy, insubstantial environment that we were standing or floating in. We might have been in a park, or at the top of a church spire. Every time that I looked more closely at a detail, it faded away and formed into something new.

“I have questions,” I said, a little dumbly. “A shitload of them, actually.”

My mother, Istrea, smiled once more. It was crazy—I felt the warmth of her smile blossom in my chest like a flower.

“The chief among them being, I would hazard a guess, why it was that I did not steer your father from the course that inevitably led to our downfall and from us being sundered from you?” my mom said.

I nodded. “Yeah, that’d be up there.”

“I had the knowledge,” Mom said. “I could have told Zenidor the true way to save Universal Magic.”

“Then why—” I began to say.

“Because I could not bring myself to tell him what it was… I would have to betray him by—by having sex with another Creation Mage.”

Launching into the sex chat with your estranged mother a second after seeing her for the first time in decades might have been awkward at any other time, but time was one thing we did not have. I was stuck in this magical version of that planet on Interstellar where every passing minute in the forge counted for ten here. I needed to be quick.

“Go on,” I prompted the tall, elegant woman standing in front of me.

“I could not be unfaithful,” my mother said simply. “I felt terrible about it, about the very thought of it, Justin. Zenidor had other lovers, yes, but I was always faithful to him. Polyamory is not in my nature. Which may be strange, considering what I am.”

“If saving Universal Magic just required two Creation Mages sleeping together, then couldn’t you have done it? Was something wrong with dad’s… you know…?”

“Not at all,” my mother said with a chuckle. “It requires the fusing of five Creation Mages. Five is a magic number, and it carries great power. Five elemental magics. Five elder magics. Five Creation Mages to save the world and magic itself. Well, that is the theory at least. But we never got to try it. I was the fifth Creation Mage in existence at the time, and there was no other to replace me. If the Arcane Council had let us live a little longer, perhaps I would have given it. Suffice to say, I did not.” Her expression became sad just then, and I wasn’t sure what to do to comfort her, so I decided upon shifting the conversation back to the main topic.

“So joining five Creation Mages would be like a defibrillator shocking a dying heart back into life?” I asked.

“That’s exactly right,” my mother said, beaming.

I hitched a smile onto my face and said, “Well, I think I can say that the same issue won’t be a problem for me, Mom. I’m practically cultivating my own harem.”

“Perhaps not, but you’ll still need to find four other Creation Mages to sleep with,” Istrea said to me. “Unless, of course, you’ve already found them?”

I shook my head. “Not yet.” I looked up, remembering something. “Dad said something about the Avalonian Kingdom rounding them, Creation Mages I mean, up and detaining them in the Castle of Ascendance. I didn’t see any while I was there recently, but if they are in there, I’ll find a way to locate them. Reginald Chaosbane might be as mad as a bag of snakes, but he’s clever too.”

Mom smiled at me and nodded. “Yes, Reginald is one of those seemingly untrustworthy men who can hold a secret closer to his chest than anyone I have ever met. If he can help you gain access to the Castle of Ascendance once more then, please, implore him to do so.”

I nodded, my face set. “If it means saving the Universal Magic, Mom, I’ll definitely fu—ah, make love to other Creation Mages.”

My mother snorted.

“Mom,” I said, finding that the word came delightfully easy to my lips, “someone told me that you used to be a bit of a dab hand with a blade and could teach me swordsmanship…”

Istrea laughed out loud and clapped her hands together, her eyes sparkling.

“Gods, boy, but you are just like your father,” she said. “Unless you had not noticed, there is scant time for that sort of thing now.”

“But if we get to speak again…”

“If we get to speak with each other again,” my mother said, “then I shall teach you all I know. I promise.”

I opened my mouth, but Istrea raised a slender hand.

“Listen to me, Justin,” she said. “Time is almost up, and I need you to remember precisely what I am going to tell you and pass it on to Reggie. Do you understand?”

“I—” I began to say.

“Do you understand me, son?” she asked me again, her voice firm. “This is beyond you or me, or the importance of any one person. We’re talking about the fate of the Multiverse here.”

I took a breath. Somewhere, far away it seemed, I was dimly aware of lying on cold earth next to a roasting hot forge fire.

“Is it about the Stronghold of the Twin Spirits?” I asked.

Istrea hit me with another of her ten-thousand-watt smiles. She nodded and looked proudly at me. “You understand,” she said.

“I understand, Mom,” I said. “Give me your instructions.”

* * *

I came back to reality with a thump and a rushing intake of ashy breath. There was sweat beading my face and soaking my hair. I ached all over.

There was no time for self-pity.

“Are you okay, friend?” Rick asked me, his voice sounding as if it were coming from about three-thousand feet above me.

“Rick,” I said, but the word came out as a croak. I tried again and this time elicited a response.

“Yes, I’m here, friend,” the big Earth Mage said, his voice veined with worry.

“Rick,” I said, “get me to the Headmaster right now.”

Reginald Chaosbane was taking his ease in a plush office in the ranch house when we were ushered in by Chubbs and Aunt Ruth. I was deposited in a comfortable wingback armchair by the crackling fire by Rick, who then left at a signal from the Headmaster.

“So, Mr. Mauler,” he said, his dark ironic eyes dancing over me in the same manner that a seedy businessman might appraise a stripper, “you talked with your dear mother.”

I didn’t bother to ask how he knew. Of course, he fucking knew.

“I did, sir,” I said. “And she gave me a message to pass along to you.”

Reginald Chaosbane threw his almost full brandy glass into the fire. Instead of smashing, the crystal vessel crunched and vanished and there was the sound of the fire smacking its lips and belching.

“Fire away,” the Headmaster said, steepling his fingers in front of his face.

“My mother said that the Stronghold of the Twin Spirits is secreted in the Spectral Realm,” I said.

Reginald Chaosbane fist pumped silently to himself a couple of times and said, “I knew I should have put a bet on with Mort and Igor, blast it!”

“My mother told me,” I said, plowing on and ignoring the Headmaster, “that this Spectral Realm is in a very defensible and secret location—in a space that is disconnected from all others.”

“Of course, of course,” Reginald said, his clever eyes narrowing, his clever fingers tugging at his suave goatee. I could practically hear the cogs of his mind whirring up into hyperspeed as he began to ruminate.

“Yes, it is as I suspected,” he said. “And doubtless she told you that we cannot simply use wormhole magic to get there, such as how we traveled on the Klaus’ sled to get to the ranch.”

My mouth opened and closed a few times, goldfish-style.

“That’s exactly what she said, sir,” I said in disbelief. “She said that the only way to gain access to the Spirit Realm would be—”

“With spectral guidance,” the Headmaster said.

“Exactly,” I said, dumbfounded by the man’s brain.

I just could not fathom it. He must have been capable of drinking more than any other person I had ever met, and yet this man had the intellect of five Steven Hawkings shut away in his noodle. Incredible. It made me wonder whether Frank Sinatra had got it right when he observed that man’s worst enemy might be alcohol, but the Bible tells you to love your enemy.

“You look perplexed, Mr. Mauler,” the Headmaster said to me, patting me chummily on the knee. “Is everything okay?”

“Honestly, Headmaster,” I said, “I’m just in awe of how the fuck a man with your appetite for mind-bending spirits and chemicals is so damn discerning.”

“I think, it’s all about having the courage to live outside of that special societal square that so many of our good, obedient fellow citizens live in,” Reginald Chaosbane said. He extracted a flask from the air and carefully poured a stream of yellow powder into his palm. With great deliberation, he sucked a great quantity of it up his nose and sighed happily.

“What society is that, sir?” I asked.

“The one which tolerates heavy caffeine imbibing from Monday to Friday, so that we keep ticking along like good little efficient worker bees,” the Headmaster said. “And the very same one which encourages us to get so tolerably plastered on the weekends that we’re too wacked out and stupid to question the prison that we have built for ourselves.”

I blinked dazedly. I was still feeling a little stupid myself from the chat with my mother and the out of body experience that it had entailed.

“What are you going to do about the spectral thing, sir?” I asked.

Reginald Chaosbane took another massive hit of whatever the hell he had in his palm and said gently, “Don’t you worry about that, my old china,” he said, patting my knee again, but missing this time. “Now that we know where to find the Stronghold, we have all we need. Barry will be able to help us.”

“Barry? Barry Chillgrave?” I asked.

“The very one,” replied Reginald.

“A specter… A poltergeist,” I said, my tired brain joining the ghostly dots.

Reginald removed a little bell from his pocket and gave it a ring. In a few moments, Barry appeared. He was the ghost of a remarkably ingenious mage who dressed in the stereotypical garb of every Hollywood pirate: red surcoat with brass buttons, a feathered hat, a wide belt, and tights tucked into his leather boots. His face, however, was devoid of skin.

He took one look at me, then at Reginald, and grinned. How he could do that without lips was a mystery, but he was definitely grinning.

“You want me to do something, don’t you, Master Chaosbane?”

“That I do,” Reginald replied. “Build me a fleet of ships. A fleet that we can transport everyone, including the supportive students of the Academy, to the Spectral Realm in.”

“That I can do, sir,” Barry said, then he groaned. “The only problem is that my shipbuilding schematics are tucked nice and safely away in the Academy’s library, while most of my gear is secreted in the dungeon in Justin here’s bloody fraternity house.”

“So we have to go back to Nevermoor?” I asked.

A few sparks crackled from the Headmaster’s mustache, danced across his eyelashes, and set the edge of one of his lace cuffs on fire.

“Yes indeedy,” Reginald said, patting the flames out. “A little sneaky sneaky under the upturned schnozzles of any of the Arcane Council’s goons and into the Academy to retrieve Barry’s technical blueprints, then off to your fraternity house to pack up the ancestral home. What could be more jolly and less taxing, hm?”

“I could think of a few things,” Barry said. “If I still had a cock, that is.”

Reginald simply stared silently at the ghostly pirate for a few moments, then turned back to me. “What do you think, Justin?”

“That’s good news, sir,” I said. “With it looking like we were going to be moving on from Nevermoor, I was hoping that we might be able to relocate my parents’ house.”

The Headmaster of the Mazirian Academy waved his hand airily. “Not a problem, my boy, not a problem at all. A simple reversal of the magic that I whisked around the place when I moved it initially and you shall have your residence fit inside of a thimble.”

A house that fits inside of a thimble… He says it like it ain’t no thing, I thought in awe.

Thinking of the fraternity house abruptly brought Felicity to my mind. The sexy Changeling would be waiting for us there too, and I was more than eager to bring her along for whatever ride Reginald Chaosbane and Barry Chillgrave had in store for us all.

Chapter 3

As anyone who had ever met Reggie Chaosbane knew, the man was a special case. The way that he casually threw out sentences like ‘…you shall have your residence fit inside of a thimble’ and ‘A little sneaky sneaky under the upturned schnozzles of any of the Arcane Council’s goons and into the Academy…’ would have sounded like A-grade Tom Cruise talk coming from anybody else.

As it was, the Headmaster of the Mazirian Academy made it all sound so simple and straightforward.

This was, as my twenty-first century gaming brain couldn’t help but think, a stealth mission. My team members?

Obviously, Barry and I would be going. The poltergeist knew where in the library his spectral schematics were hidden and how to access them—he was, essentially, our safe-cracker. Along with the two of us, I had elected to take Damien, Rick, and Nigel. Since we were all students of the Mazirian Academy, there was less chance of anything looking out of place if anyone spotted us.

Bradley was another fraternity brother that I was eager to have along on this mission. After winning his cooking competition, he had been enjoying Yuletide with the rest of the Flamewalker clan, although I wasn’t sure if this meant that he was at the next property over from the Chaosbane Ranch or some other place.

Rather than go over there and risk potential assault by the elderly Flamewalker who had also been on the receiving end of a serious amount of bullshit, Nigel had sent a homing phoenix. The homing phoenix was not a creature, but more like a little origami bird that homed in on the recipient of the note that was written on its inside. Once the note had been unfolded and read, the homing phoenix would then burst into flames, effectively destroying the communication.

The plan was that Bradley would meet us at the fraternity house after he disarmed the wards that Barry had placed on the building before we had left for Chaosbane Ranch. He would also prep the two remaining Blade Sisters, who were currently residing as prisoners in the dungeons, on what was going on. His third task would be to make sure that the Changeling, Felicity, was also at home.

So, with Barry riding pillion behind me, Rick, Nigel, Damien, and I took to the skies on the backs of the fantastic broomsticks that we had been given by the incredible craftswoman, Solarphine.

“Where exactly are we going, Barry?” I asked the poltergeist over my shoulder as we hurtled over the pristine fields. We were flying at no more than fifteen feet off the ground at Barry’s instruction.

“His Headmastership bade me get us back to Nevermoor in as expedient a method as possible, sir,” the poltergeist said. “That means a portal, sir.”

“But I thought all the portals and wormholes in and out of Manafell were monitored?” I pointed out. “I remember the Headmaster telling me about the Slap on the Wrist spell defense.”

“Bah, there be more than just the official channels to get in and out o’ the capital, sir,” Barry said. His tone told me that he held the ‘official channels’ in little regard. “How else would smugglers be able to ply their trade, eh? Don’t you worry about a thing now, sir, not a thing. Old Barry will see you right.”

Barry guided us around the skirts of Manafell. We carefully kept our very low altitude while avoiding the little villages and farmsteads sprinkled around the outskirts of Avalonia’s capital.

Eventually, after heading through a shallow ravine cut by a mostly frozen over river, we found ourselves approaching a disused mining camp.

Skimming low across the surface of the icy rivulet, we approached the camp, banked hard, and descended to our feet. Rick, with his usual airborne panache, managed to drop straight through a selection of cages holding the skeletal remains of what might have once been drakes. Wood and bones scattered in all directions.

“Smooth work, dude,” Damien said as Rick picked himself up and cast a belligerent look at the broomstick.

It was the sort of little ramshackle setup that you might expect to find in the background scenery of some Western film, with a few dilapidated shacks and the mouth of a dark tunnel cut haphazardly out of the face of a steep, crumbling bank. The kind of place where toothless, bearded prospectors might be found panning, without much hope, for gold. It looked totally deserted.

Except, I noticed, for a small campfire at the mouth of the tunnel, over which sat a battered tea kettle.

We followed Barry up the path that led into the mouth of the tunnel. Barry’s surety was a comfort, but I still had one or two spells ready to deploy should the occasion call for it. If there was anything or anyone inside that wanted to get the drop on us, my staff would be in my hand in a second.

Inside the tunnel, there was a rusted track laid into the floor and disappearing on its crooked way into the unguessable darkness. Beyond the entrance to the tunnel, things would have been impenetrably black were it not for Barry’s ghostly green light omitted from—for lack of a better word—his body.

“It looks just like an abandoned gold mine in here,” Nigel said.

“That’s because it is an abandoned gold mine, squire,” Barry said.

“Barry, is that you?” a voice hissed forlornly from out of the gloom.

I almost jumped but managed to keep my poise. After almost six months of madness and unexpected attacks, fights and ambushes, my body and mind had come to unconsciously expect things to loom up out of the dark.

“Holy troll testes!” Nigel gasped. “Who the fuck is that?”

“Aye, tis me, Buttuck,” Barry replied, with a little more force and command than he normally used in his day-to-day life—or afterlife. “Don’t act like you can’t recall the solid, charming timbre of the most feared aeronautical pirate who ever lived!”

“‘Course I fucking recognize your voice, you old bag of wind,” replied the owner of the invisible voice. “I wouldn’t have said your ruddy name otherwise, would I?”

Another poltergeist faded out of the darkness. He did not come out of the shadows so much as coalesce into being, as if someone were controlling his toxic green glow with a dimmer switch.

He was a sloppily fat specter with a mane of frizzy green hair tied up in a sailor’s kerchief. He had a wispy, ghostly beard curling off his chin. His garb consisted of a suitably ragged pair of breeches and a patched dandy’s coat that was buttoned and strained over his massive paunch. When he turned, I saw that part of the top of his head was missing, showing a soup of addled spectral brains. A stuffed bird sat on one shoulder and wobbled as he floated toward us.

“I would have been surprised if you had forgotten my voice, seeing as we only saw one another the other damned day,” Barry Chillgrave said.

“The other day, was it?” the one known as Buttuck said thoughtfully.

“Give or take a couple of centuries,” Barry replied casually. He pointed at the stuffed bird on Buttuck’s shoulder. The thing looked like a cross between an owl and a small turkey with constipation.

“What?” Buttuck said in a defensive voice.

“I forgot that you kept that damned devil bird on your shoulder,” Barry scoffed, leering as only an entity with little more than skull can leer. “Can’t believe that you held with that damned tripe all the years we were smuggling in the same circles.”

“I was right in the end though, weren’t I?” said Buttuck, his words etched with smug defiance. “It heralded my death in the end. Screeched and everything right before I snuffed it.”

“Course, it screeched before you popped your bloody clogs, Buttuck,” Barry said, rolling his eyes so that they performed a double loop-the-loop in his head. “Be a darned idiotic creature that didn’t cry out at a mana-round heading straight for it.”

Buttuck pointed at his gruesomely punctured head. “The evidence speaks for itself, that’s all I’m saying, Captain Chillgrave.”

“What a load of twaddle,” Barry muttered, shaking his head at Buttuck. “Of all the ridiculous, unfounded…”

“Look, I know you didn’t hold with much superstitious stuff,” Buttuck interrupted, “but—”

I cleared my throat.

The two poltergeists turned to look at me.

I smiled politely. “Hi there,” I said. “I was just wondering whether you two phantasmic fuckbuddies would mind shutting the hell up so that we could get on with this rather pressing assignment we’ve been sent on?”

Barry was a picture of apology. “Aye, sir, o’ course! My deepest apologies, skipper!” He wheeled on Buttuck and stabbed a skeletal finger at him. “You heard the mortal, Buttuck! We need a bootlegger’s portal to Nevermoor and we need it now!”

Buttuck tapped his rotten-looking front teeth.

“Hm,” he said, “that’ll cost you that will.”

Next to me, Damien looked around at the dank darkness that hemmed us in.

“No offense, bro,” he said, “but what the shit would you do with any sort of monetary payment? I’m thinking that it’s going to take more than a few coins to get Asscrackistan here up to an acceptable level of interior decor.”

Buttuck narrowed his eyes at Damien and turned to Barry.

“If I sort you out with a portal,” the pot-bellied poltergeist said, “I want you to take me on whatever voyage it is you’re embarking on, Cap’n.”

Barry looked over at me. I gave him the universal signal to give the guy what he wants so long as he does what we need, which is, funnily enough, the exact same finger twirl used to indicate that someone is crazy, only not pointed at your own head.

“What makes ye think that I’m off on a voyage, lad?” Barry asked the specter.

“You’re up to something, that much I know,” Buttuck said. “No one has come through here for the past one-hundred and twelve years! I’m bored to death here, Captain Chillgrave.”

Nigel started to make a noise that I knew was the start of him pointing out that Buttuck was, in fact, already deceased, but Rick clapped a couple of enormous fingers over the halfling’s mouth to stop him.

“Why the heck don’t you just leave your post, then?” Barry said.

Buttuck drew himself up. Admittedly, there was not a lot of difference, due to the fact that he was practically spherical anyway, but I could tell that he was affronted.

“A sailor don’t ever leave his post, Cap’n,” he said in a dignified voice. “Not without the express permission of a senior officer. There’s no honor in it.”

“We were fuckin’ pirates!” Barry said exasperatedly. “We were the bloody antithesis of honorable, lad!”

“Still,” Buttuck said.

Barry sighed, or at least made a noise like someone expelling breath.

“Fine, if you sort out a portal for us,” Barry said, “then I give you permission to join us on our voyage, to serve under Master Mauler and myself.”

Barry pointed at me, and I saluted at Buttuck.

“What’s more,” Barry said, “once you’ve served me true and faithfully-like, and we’ve seen this voyage through, I give you my solemn word that ye may go on shore leave indefinitely.”

Buttuck’s eyes shone.

“Shore leave, sir?” he said.

“That’s right, Buttuck,” Barry said. “Shore leave. An eternity of drinking, whoring, and dicing.”

“Aye aye, sir!” Buttuck said and ripped off a salute of such crispness that it would have left Steve Rogers with a tear in his eye.

Without further ado, thank the gods, Buttuck moved away and began singing what sounded like a seaman’s shanty, although in a tongue that sounded like nothing I had ever heard before.

“You recognize that language, Barry?” I asked the poltergeist.

“Nay, sir,” Barry said. “That’s why we had to come here. Old Buttuck might be an ass in many respects, but he might be the last undead soul on Avalonian soil who knows how to conjure a long-range bootleggers’ portal in an instant.”

“Ready, sirs!” Buttuck said, and his voice was no longer forlorn but alight and jolly with adventure. He was standing beside what might very well have been a flapping sheet of gray silk, had I not known that it was a doorway through space and time.

“Right,” I said, squaring my shoulders, “let’s fucking do this.”

Chapter 4

I shouldered my broomstick and led the way into the portal, stepping out of the underground tunnel and into…

…the plain hazy light of Nevermoor at dusk.

The others followed a second after me, and I had to step aside to avoid being jostled.

There was no snow in Nevermoor or in the surrounding countryside, but it was still cold. I was pretty unclear about Avalonia’s geography, but I figured that meant that wherever the Chaosbane Ranch was located was further south than where we were now. Possibly.

Buttuck’s impromptu portal had spat us out in the middle of the official portal station on the edge of Nevermoor. It was manned by the dwarf, Petram, who I had bribed with unlimited access to Pulchra Vaitati—the very unreligious nunnery in the orchard land surrounding the town proper. It was a nunnery that was more brothel than convent, and old Petram was more than happy to trade his silence for a few rounds of hide the purple sausage every now and again with the nuns up there.

I led the way, not having to tell the three men and two poltergeists following along behind me to keep quiet.

I found old Petram snoozing in his booth, just as I thought he would be. He was attired in his old-fashioned light blue uniform that reminded me so much of an old school bellhop. His golden pince-nez was balanced precariously on the end of his crooked nose.

I slapped my hand down on the desk and caught his pince-nez as they leapt gleefully off the end of his nose for freedom.

“What in the name of a minotaur’s mother’s muff is…” he started to cry, before he saw my face.

“Ah, Mr. Mauler,” the old dwarf said. “I should have known it was you. It usually is, whenever I find myself in sudden need for fresh underclothes.”

“Sorry to wake you, Petram,” I said. “Just wanted to make sure that our little agreement still stood?”

Petram smiled, but I could tell that there was something bothering the old codger. He looked wary, scared even, where once he had been full of good-natured bluster. Despite this, the old dwarf’s beard bristled as he set his jaw in a determined fashion.

“Oh, the agreement stands still, sir,” he said. “No fear of that. The gals up at the nunnery have been treating me very kindly. Very hospitable to an old dwarf they are, especially one who needs extensive massaging on a cold winter evening…”

I put up my hand to forestall any divulging of details that might make me throw up into my own mouth.

“Good to hear,” I said.

“Only…” Petram said.

“Only what, friend?” Rick rumbled from over my shoulder.

The dwarf looked up at the towering Earth Mage. He had to look a long way up. He swallowed.

“Well, your movements and your business are your own, of course,” he said. “And I know you know that I was once a spy for the Arcane Council, but I’m not interested anymore.”

“Spit it out, friend,” Rick said kindly.

“It’s just, you don’t have to worry about me saying anything to the minions of the Arcane Council, but just be careful when you go down into the town is all,” Petram said. “Things have changed this last week. Keep your damned heads down. You’ll see what I mean. Things are queer in town. Unsettled. And if you were thinking of heading up to the Academy, I should rethink the notion.”

I nodded. “All right, Petram. Thanks for the heads up.”

We moved on down the path of white gravel and made our way cautiously out into the lane beyond.

My plan was to go around the houses on the edge of the town and cut through the back of the Academy. Once we had gathered the schematics that Barry needed, we’d head back out through the side of the Academy, back into the town and then make our way up the hill to the frat house.

No muss, no fuss.

“Right, Buttuck,” I said as we lurked by a drystone wall, “I need you to take our broomsticks and transport them back to our frat house.”

“The dwelling lies to the east of the Mazirian Academy,” Barry told the other poltergeist in the tone that I was coming to know as his ‘captain’s voice’. “It’s at the top of the highest hill that overlooks the town. Ye can’t miss it, Buttuck—ye’d better hope that ye can’t, at any rate.”

“Aye aye, Cap’n,” Buttuck said. With a commendable lack of blather, he gathered the broomsticks together using a coil of eldritch rope that he made appear out of nowhere. He slung his bundle of broomsticks over his shoulder and bobbed off in the direction that Damien was indicating.

The rest of us carried on around the town in the opposite direction. It was not long before it became apparent that it was as Petram had said: there was a strange and unsettled air permeating the place.

Even though we were doing our best to avoid any rambling locals, I soon got the impression that we might have been able to walk straight through the center of Nevermoor without encountering any of the local inhabitants. Everything was quiet. Somber. There was none of the usual bustle and noise that I would have expected for the town around sundown.

With the disconcerting lack of life in the town, it didn’t take long to make our way through the dense shrubs, boggy ground, and collection of random statues and discarded, broken magical implements that lay on the border of the western side of the Academy.

We arrived inside the hedgerow that marked the border of a stretch of the Academy’s manicured lawns.

“What can you see, Nigel?” I asked.

The halfling stuck his small head through the branches of the bushes and peered surreptitiously through the foliage.

“Great dripping dryad danglers,” the Wind Mage cursed under his breath, “there are Arcane Council sentries about.”

“How can you tell?” Damien asked.

“I can tell. My parents were highborn, remember?” Nigel said. “I know arrogant bureaucratic thugs when I see them. My parents used to have enough of them over for dinner for me to spot them from a mile away.” He let out a low whistle. “And I’ll be barbarian’s beef cannon, they’ve got roving Arcane Knights patrolling too!”

At any other time, I might have asked Nigel where the fuck he was getting these expressions from, but now was not the time. I put that question on the backburner.

“I guess that means the Arcane Council has openly taken control of the Academy,” I said. “They’re obviously making no secret of the fact that they’re gunning for Reginald Chaosbane.”

“And us, most likely,” growled Rick.

Nigel nodded and punched his fist into his open palm. “What about our War Mage studies! We were looking so freakin’ good!”

“Don’t get your panties in too much of a twist, Samwise,” I said, patting Nigel on the shoulder. “Let’s just concentrate on getting in and out without detection, yeah?”

“Why do you always call me these weird names at times like this?” Nigel asked me.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Meriadoc,” I said, frowning.

“Plan?” Damien asked.

“We follow Barry by the least obtrusive path possible to the library,” I said. “We take any Arcane assholes we have to, but quietly.”

Everyone nodded. There were no quips. No superfluous words. This was not the time for it.

I crossed my fingers and summoned my staff.

“Whoa,” Damien said in a hushed voice.

Whoa was right. What I should have held was my father’s black crystal staff, which had blended with the original wooden staff that I had picked from Barry’s Magical Emporium.

What had appeared in my hand though, was a staff that was neither black nor white—or maybe it was black and white.

“Looks like the staffs of the Twin Spirits have fused into one,” I said, turning the scintillating rod in my hands.

It was that strange unnamable color; not black not silver, not gray or white, but a marriage of all. It was color that bewildered the eye and captured it at the same time. Hypnotic. Beautiful. Its shape was efficient, elegant, and dangerous—three attributes that I couldn’t help but think rather personified my parents, not to mention Vanyir, the dragon spirit who had been inside of my original vector.

Rick’s eyes were sparkling like a couple of green gemstones in his blocky face as he ran them with a connoisseur's eyes over the staff.

“Cool,” he said simply.

“Very,” Damien added.

I smiled proudly. “Alright. Let’s go!”

Barry led the way across the lawn and up to the pool area. There was a distinct lack of people here, especially for this time in the afternoon. Sure, it was the ass-end of Yuletide season, but there should have at least been someone enjoying a drink or having a dip, but there was not a single solitary student in sight.

We paused behind an enormous stone planter, and Barry glanced around.

“Coast is clear,” he stated.

Incorrectly, as it turned out.

As we moved swiftly toward the door that led into the Academy proper, the said door opened and an Arcane Knight stepped out into the evening air. I recognized him as Arcane Knight because he was dressed in the same sort of shiny, overelaborate armor as the men and women I had seen guarding Queen Hagatha.

He was an ugly motherfucker, this particular guy—the sort of ugly that would have made a freight train hop the rails and take a dirt road. I didn’t imagine a guard who straddled the line between a hideous human and a beautiful chimpanzee would be often put on the Queen’s guarding detail, so I could guess why he’d been assigned this job.

As I was foremost in our group, he and I got to share a joint moment of shocked surprise.

I recovered first.

I reached out and touched the guy on his stubbled face and released my Leech spell. It was a degenerative little bit of sorcery that stripped a single enemy of their strength and invested it into the caster.

The Arcane Knight, big and tough as he looked, went instantly pale and fell forward. His knees buckled, but not only his knees. Every joint in him seemed to just collapse. I just had enough time to step out of the way as about two-hundred and eighty pounds of armored knight fell past me. At the same time, I felt a sudden surge in my energy levels—a rush of pure vigor, like I’d just ingested four energy drinks.

I braced myself for the sound of a truckload of cymbals being tossed onto a patio behind me, but no sound came.

I twisted and saw that Rick had caught the falling Arcane Knight by the collar of his tabard and was staining to keep him from falling over.

“The flowerbed, man, the flowerbed!” Damien hissed in Rick’s ear.

With an almighty heave, the Earth Mage pulled the Arcane Knight upright and dumped him into a nearby planter and out of sight of any casual eyes.

Peering down, I saw that the man looked very green around the gills. His arm trembled, as if he would very much like to point a finger at me but was incapable. With a soft sigh, his eyes rolled up and he passed the fuck out.

“Nighty night, Sir Spanksalot,” Damien said quietly as we passed by.

Thankfully, because the library was one of, if not the key room in all of the Academy, it was located on the main floor, not too far from where we had entered.

Barry was on point, and he moved cautiously with a silence that only one without a physical body can achieve.

We came across a couple more Arcane Knights, but we were able to hear them clanking along well before we actually came in sight of them. On the two occasions that avoiding them by ducking into an empty classroom or behind some convenient hiding place was impossible, we dealt with them in a manner that would have made Solid Snake proud.

The first guard was taken out by Barry drifting casually out in front of him, effectively distracting the elf and turning his back from where the real danger lay. That real danger was Rick, covered in his Rock Skin spell, and wielding no other weapon than his massive ham-sized, rocky fist. One blow on the top of the melon was all that it took to switch the guard’s lights out. He keeled over backward, and Damien and I towed him into a nice dark corner to have a snooze.

The second Arcane Knight, a feisty dark elf with a drawn sword in her hand and a mean-ass demeanor, came around a corner to find me slumped against a wall someway down the corridor.

“Hey, what the hell are you doing down there?” she hissed, in an accent that was almost a parody of a Russian villain in a Bond movie.

I burbled something and lolled my head around on my neck for good measure.

The woman was no idiot—she proceeded down the hallway with her sword at the ready, her eyes flicking this way and that as she approached me. She stepped through the open doorway, her blade at the ready.

And that was when Nigel hit her with a silent blast of wind that sent her reeling into the shadowy corner of the hall. At the same time, I used my Telekinesis spell to hit the woman in the back of her head with enough force to knock her out but not enough to kill her, and she slid down the wall.

Not bad work, all in all. Especially not when you considered that our usual MO was to walk into a place and start blowing shit up.

The library, like the rest of the Academy, was eerily deserted. The mammoth bookshelves stood around us, spreading out from the central reading area like twelve spokes in a giant wheel.

“Sir, if you’ll follow me,” Barry said.

I shook my head and grabbed a hold of Nigel’s arm so that he wouldn’t be tempted to wander off for a quick browse.

“Barry, all of us don’t need to tag along with you,” I said. “We’re not the fucking Famous Five. Hurry up and get it and then let’s make like Tom and cruise—I mean, let’s just get out of here, okay?”

Barry nodded and disappeared through the nearest shelf.

We waited for an interminable time. All I could think of was whether we had knocked all our guards out well enough, and whether or not one of their Arcane Council buddies might stumble across them soon.

Barry reappeared with a smile.

“You have what you need?” I asked.

Barry patted his spectral pocket. “Aye, sir, that I do.”

I nodded my head toward the door. “Let’s boogie.”

We made it back outside without too much trouble. I wasn’t sure whether to be reassured by the lack of posted guards or not.

Surely, the Arcane Council, a government that had cast a spell over most of an entire populace to eradicate the memories of parents from their minds, were not stupid. They might be completely without morals, verging on being completely wacko and about as dastardly a bunch of bureaucrats as ever existed, but they weren’t fucking stupid.

The guards whom we had knocked out were still where we had left them, though, and had not been touched. Maybe the Council had posted only enough for an alarm to be raised if the Headmaster showed up at the Mazirian Academy, or maybe they really didn’t expect the man to.

Whatever the reason, we managed to get all the way out of the building and were affecting that not-quite-walk-not-quite-run technique that bank robbers and people who don’t want to look like they are hurrying to cross the road use, when we ran into a threesome of Arcane minions out by the pool.

They were not Arcane Knights. They were robed and looked to me more like administrators than anything else.

But they had daggers at their waists and their fingers crackled with mana.

Sometimes, you have to be cruel to be kind and, as much as I thought these Arcane Council jackasses might deserve it, I found that I didn’t want to see them dead. It didn’t feel right somehow.

So, to save them that fate, I channeled all the extra mana I had taken from the guard I had Leeched and hit the lead nymph with a Paralyzing Zap. The spell was of such intensity that I heard her shoulders pop from their sockets as she jerked in mid-air and then collapsed in a heap on the floor.

Barry shot toward the second mage —a brutish half-orc with black and red marbled skin —and engulfed his head in his ghostly body. The half-orc thrashed and jerked, his grimoire vector he had been clasping falling from his grip as he tried to get the poltergeist off of him.

Meanwhile, the third Arcane minion managed to fire off a burst of sizzling green light that ripped through the air toward Rick’s broad chest.

Damien, with the reflexes and aim of a man born and raised on the streets, deflected the enemy spell aside with a Fireball, causing it to zip past Rick’s cheek leaving a rough graze. The big man grunted but didn’t appear badly hurt.

Nigel hit the third guy with a burst of Sandstorm square in the face. The abrasive Wind Magic made the man stumble back, flapping at his face.

With a curt gesture and a snort like a bull, Rick made a very localized Rock Wall shoot up from the ground, right under the stumbling Arcane minion’s face. It hit the guy under the chin, and he backflipped. His teeth flew in all directions as he landed with a dull smack on the tiles.

Barry’s foe collapsed, unconscious, a moment later.

We ran.

Down the hill, through the hedges, vaulting a low ornamental wall that skirted the main drive of the Academy, and into the edge of the town.

We made it all the way to the base of the hill on the top of which sat the fraternity house, and my parents’ old home, and up it without incident. Rick was puffing at the back of the line, but I felt a sort of thrumming exhilaration in my chest. This was the stuff. This was what made life worth living. That feeling of defying the odds, of flying in the face of adversity. It was heady shit, and I loved it.

When we had jogged through the overgrown garden that fronted the fraternity house, we found our good pal and fifth frat bro, Bradley Flamewalker waiting for us.

Buttuck was floating at Bradley’s side. Felicity, the Changeling, in her saber-toothed cat form, was lying on the wreck of a sofa that Nigel had destroyed after a particularly raucous house party.

Felicity gave a growl of welcome, and her head came up as we popped into sight. Bradley clapped his hands and let out a long whoop of excitement and relief.

“Thank the gods, you made it,” he said.

I stepped toward the handsome aristocrat, with whom the rest of us had butted heads with so fiercely when we had first met. We clasped hands and slapped each other on the back.

“Good to see you, man,” I said with genuine warmth.

“Likewise, brother,” Bradley said. “How was your Yuletide?”

I puffed out my cheeks. “Eventful would be the word that I’d use.”

Bradley grinned and ran a hand through his perfectly coiffed hair. “I imagine that is probably somewhat of an understatement.”

I held my thumb and forefinger a fraction of an inch apart.

The rest of the boys greeted Bradley in the same manner as I had.

While these catch-ups were taking place, I wandered over to Buttuck and said, “The broomsticks are stowed?”

“Aye, Mr. Mauler, sir,” the poltergeist said.

“Excellent. And Bradley has made ready the Blade Sisters? He’s told Acer and Pravum that if they thought they were cooped up before, then they should be ready to get a little more… cozy?” It was hard not to fall into pirate speak with Buttuck.

“If you mean the buxom wenches who are stowed in the dungeon under lock and key, sir,” the sloppy spectral sky-pirate said, “then aye, sir, the good-looking gentleman has made them abreast of your plans.”

It might have been my imagination, but I thought that the poltergeist had leered a little when he had uttered the word ‘abreast’. I wouldn’t have blamed him. The Blade Sisters were sexy and lethal in equal measure.

“Good,” I said. “Then, I guess that means we can get Barry to work his magic and pack the old place up.”

“Aye, sir,” Buttuck said dutifully. “And then we’ll be off, sir?”

“That’s right. Can you conjure a portal here?”

The poltergeist considered this, while Barry, having overheard our conversation, began herding everyone away from the house so that he could start shrinking it.

“Aye, sir, I can conjure it here, sir,” Buttuck told me, “but it might take me a moment. I’ll get started now, with your permission, sir.”

“Get to it, Mr. Buttuck,” I said, in my best impersonation of Anthony Hopkins in The Bounty.

While the two poltergeists busied themselves with their respective tasks, I zoned in on the conversation between my recently reunited frat brothers.

“You quite like knocking people on the head, don’t you, Rick?” Nigel was saying to the big man at his side.

“People under the Arcane Council employ, friend?” Rick said in his slow, thoughtful voice. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

“You’re very good at it,” Nigel said kindly.

“Thank you, Nigel,” Rick said.

“Tell me, if you were offered a sack of gold, would you knock me on the head like you knocked that Arcane Knight on the head?” Nigel asked slyly.

“Friend,” Rick said solemnly, “if you showed me the money right now, you’d already be asleep.”

The rest of us laughed while Nigel did his best to look affronted.

“You’d hit me for money, Rick,” he said.

“Not for money. Money is what you carry around in your pocket and buy beer with, friend,” Rick countered. “But, for a sack of gold… POW, you’d be out for the count.”

Bradley slapped his thigh while Damien chuckled heartily and patted Nigel on his head.

“But do not worry, Nigel,” Rick continued, pulling the halfling into a one-armed hug, “I would use some of that gold to fix your head.”

Bradley howled with mirth. “Ah, man! I’ve - I’ve missed you guys.”

There was a dull squelching sound and then a crisp pop. Sunlight, no longer impeded by the giant edifice that was my frat house, beamed down on me. I turned and saw Barry pointing toward something on the grass near his floating feet.

I bent down and picked up my house with my fingers.

I snorted and shook my head, marveling at magic in general.

“Talk about a mobile home,” I muttered and stowed the house in the depths of the breast pocket of my jacket.

At the same moment, Buttuck called, “The portal is ready, gentlemen!”

He had summoned the portal on the very edge of the cliff on which the fraternity house had stood. This meant that, to step through the portal, one had to, essentially, step off the precipice.

“All right, boys,” I said. “Let’s not mess around. Everyone through.”

The lads caught my tone and moved to obey. I didn’t particularly like playing the part of the hardass or the voice of reason but, above all, I wanted to keep these friends of mine safe. The sooner we were out of here, the better.

Rick, Damien, Barry, Bradley, and Buttuck all passed through the veil, never hesitating as they stepped off the cliff and through the magical opening in the sky.

Nigel hesitated only a little as he approached the edge of the precipice—the last vestige of a fear of heights that the flying Wind Mage had basically conquered.

I grinned as he paused, taking the time to point at Felicity at his feet. The purple saber-toothed cat had shrunk down from the size of a Great Dane to a Jack Russel.

Nigel bent and scooped the Changeling up.

“See you in a second,” he said.

I slapped him on the back, and he stepped through the portal.

I looked behind me, at the place on which the fraternity house had sat. The garden and the pool and Bradley’s beloved vegetable patches were still there, but they looked strange without the gothic hulk of a house in which me and the boys had shared such epic times.

It was as I was looking at the destroyed sofa in the front garden, that the two Arcane Knights appeared over the crest of the hill and started pushing their way through the tangled undergrowth of the garden.

My fists bunched, and my staff appeared in my right hand with the speed of thought. I felt a knot form in my stomach, knowing what had to happen next.

“There he is!” the frontmost Knight yelled to his companion. “Let’s bloody get ‘im!”

His compatriot, a sinuous fellow with a solemn face, looked unsure.

“We were supposed to send for backup if we found them,” he said.

“It’s just one,” the first guy said. He was squat and must have been at least half dwarf, or maybe part gnoll. “We can bloody well take h—”

I hit them both with my Rain of Toads spell.

As a professional soldier, in the employ of Queen Hagatha, the ruler of Avalonia, I bet you came to think that you’d be ready for anything. Turned out though, that a rain of slimy, fat amphibians was not one of those things.

The toads smacked and bounced off the Knights’ polished armor, as good a distraction as there had possibly ever been ever. For a second, I didn’t think either of the mages knew that I had actually been responsible. They probably thought they had just been caught in a bit of peculiar weather. Just for a moment.

And a moment was all I needed.

I was the last man, and I had my friends to protect. For all our sakes, it was going to be best if where we had gone remained as much of a mystery as possible.

I boosted into the air, using my Flame Flight spell, and launched myself backward in a slow and graceful backflip. As I rotated through the air, I summoned a Lightning Skink out of the ether and, with a stab of my staff, sent the lithesome, sleek, neon bright Storm Magic creature streaking through the air like lightning.

There was no time for mercy. No wiggle room.

The Lightning Skink, all slashing, glassy claws and snapping jaws, crashed into the two Arcane Knights like a thunderbolt of fury. The two luckless Arcane Knights were bowled over, sizzling little bolts of dancing lightning running over their armored bodies like bright blue strands of gossamer.

The way that the Lightning Skink attacked was akin to a really furious cat: swiping paws and needle-sharp claws, moving so fast that the Knights didn’t barely had a chance to tell which way was up before they were knocked over or spun on the spot. One got to his feet, while the Skink was busy trying to open his pal’s armor up like a starving tabby attacking a tin of tuna, and fumbled for the vector at his side. He stepped on a toad and went somersaulting ass over helmet.

The Lightning Skink and toads would keep those guys plenty busy and, I hoped, too embarrassed to tell their superiors about what had gone down.

With a grim smile of satisfaction, I dropped backward through the air and into the waiting portal on the cliff’s edge.

Chapter 5

I landed heavily, ankle-deep in fresh snow, and staggered. That was the thing about portals: you could be freefalling one minute and standing on solid ground the next. There was a metaphor in there somewhere, but I was in too much of a rush to pick it out just then.

Buttuck’s portal had taken us back to the Chaosbane Ranch. The two poltergeists, my four fraternity brothers, Felicity, and I were standing on top of the low hill that looked down onto the main ranch house. It was where Damien and Enwyn had caught up with me, just before Reginald Chaosbane had addressed the gathering of rebels. From here, I was afforded a fairly clear view of most of the ranch.

Enough of a view, at least, to see that we were not the only fresh arrivals.

“Are they… Are they more members of the Arcane Council, do you think?” Damien asked me, staring down at the numerous figures in official-looking robes milling around the campers on the ranch.

“They do have that finger-wagging, stick-up-the-ass look of professional government functionaries, don’t they?” I replied.

“Looks like we’re just in time, sir,” Barry said to me. He was peering down on the scene from over my shoulder, doing his best to blend in with the landscape.

Poltergeists were still outlaws according to the Arcane Council—Barry himself was still technically a fugitive from the Eldritch Prison. Sat as we were on top of a bright, snow-white hill, clad mostly in dark clothing and with a couple of glowing green poltergeists in our midst, we were currently about as inconspicuous as a turd in a fruit bowl.

“That may be, Barry,” I said, “but just in time for what? That’s the fucking question.”

“It doesn’t look as if these jokers are here in considerable force yet,” Nigel mused, his sharp eyes flicking back and forth behind his spectacles. “Looks like they haven’t quite decided whether or not they’re going to move in to arrest anyone as of yet. They still must not be sure whether the Chaosbanes have actually done anything wrong.”

“Just like Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock was telling me,” I muttered. “The Arcane Council couldn’t know for sure whether the Chaosbane clan are up to anything shady, even with all these people on their land, and even if they were spying on them. The family is just too weird and too unpredictable. This could be some organized orgy for all the law might know.”

There must have been about a dozen of these robed figures, bundled up in good gloves and good boots and furred hats against the cold, which was getting colder as the sun sank toward the western horizon. They were marching around and accosting many of the campers, leaning over them where they sat around their campfires. I couldn’t hear what they were saying from where we were, but it was obviously a clear case of the stern presence of the law making itself known and wanting to know why all these people were gathered here.

Now and again, one of the more belligerent or fiery-tempered campers would get to his or her feet and jab a finger at whatever Arcane Council representative was questioning them. The sounds of raised voices, though the words were indistinguishable, floated through the still chill air.

I had a feeling in my gut that it wouldn’t be long before—

There was a clatter and bang that echoed out over the beautiful, frigid picturesque landscape as the door to the main ranch house burst open and Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock Chaosbane stumped out onto the porch.

“Right!” he roared in a voice of phlegm-coated gravel. “I’ve had just enough of you Council bastards sticking your snouts around my property. There’s nothing that concerns you going on here, so be off with you!”

One of the robed figures nearest the ranch house strode purposefully toward the porch. Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock stood at the top of the steps and waited for him. He might have been a squat old boy, cutting an almost perfectly square figure, but he radiated the unmistakable malevolence of a landowner who had caught someone taking a shit in his field.

The Arcane Council civil servant reached into his robes and pulled out a scroll. He brandished it in front of him with the self-important and smug air of a dude who holds all the cards. I could see that his head was moving as he talked, no doubt giving Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock the Avalonian equivalent of ‘Yes, in fact we do have a search warrant, sir.’

Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock waited until the Arcane Council henchman was halfway up the broad steps that led up to the porch, gesturing commandingly at the old man, before he raised his walking stick and leveled it at the man’s chest.

There was a sound like an E-11 blaster rifle being fired through a megaphone, and the Arcane Council goon was hurled backward. He spun through the air like a Catherine wheel, wreathed in popping pink sparks, and plowed a furrow through the snow when he landed.

“Oh, shit, there it is,” Damien said succinctly.

As if on cue, spells erupted in all directions. It looked like both the renegade campers, those who supported my parents and the Chaosbanes, and the Arcane Council goombahs had just been waiting for a reason to throw down. Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock, in true Chaosbane style, had been the match that lit the fuse.

“Let’s get down there!” I yelled. “We need to figure out what the fuck the plan is now.”

“But sir,” Barry said, “those Arcane Council dogs will have backup not too far away. Ye can bet your bunghole they will.”

“That’s exactly why we need to figure out what Chaosbane has planned next,” I said.

The six of us made our way down the hill, Rick tripping in a rabbit hole and rolling the last twenty yards like a giant snowball.

Vector-fire was thick in the air, spells splashing and crashing all around. I slid behind a wooden water trough as an attractive Elven official pointed her hand at me. The bracelet around her wrist glowed, and a spiraling vortex of blue and white light hit the trough turning it into a giant ice cube.

Damien let loose with his Fire Vortex spell in response, a stream of roaring orange flame erupting from his hands. The Elven woman, who was clearly a Frost Mage, erected an icy scutum shield, one similar to that used by the Romans, just in time. She was punched backward by the force of the Fire spell, though, and she crashed through a tent.

Not waiting for her to retaliate, I hopped up and sprinted for the ranch house, the others close on my six.

Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock was still holding forth on the porch, wielding his walking stick vector like a stereotypical crazy old coot with a double-barreled shotgun. Chaos Magic boomed from the end of it, spraying across the front yard in scintillating sprays of silver and black and white projectiles.

All the while, as answering spells chewed the porch around him to splinters and ricocheted off the hastily erected shields that Aunt Ruth conjured around him, the patriarch of the Chaosbane clan laughed like a maniac. He pointed his walking stick at a tree that one of the Arcane Council was hiding behind. The pine sprang to life and swung a heavy limb at the mage and sent him flying into the frozen over duck pond.

It wasn’t going all the way of the rebels though. I saw at least four Chaosbane supporters lying senseless or bound in thaumaturgical bonds as we darted through the battle zone.

“Barry,” I said, “how long is it going to take you to put together these ships that the Headmaster sent you to go and get the schematics for.”

Barry puffed out the withered flaps that passed for his cheeks. “Bugger me, sir, I should say no longer than… four seconds.”

I felt my eyebrows head north and barely registered the Fire spell that hit a fencepost nearby and reduced it to ash.

“Only that long?” I asked.

“Aye, sir,” the poltergeist told me seriously, “but I dare say that I could get it down to three seconds for sure if we were really pushed.”

“Well, that’s something,” I said.

Thanks to Hollywood and books, I had imagined that we would form a defensive perimeter while Barry and Buttuck built the spectral ships. In my head, it was going to be a very testing and trying time.

So, this was good news from Barry. It was nice to know that sometimes surprises would actually work in our favor.

We made our way carefully around the side of the ranch.

Everyone involved in the magical melee was more interested in incapacitating their opposition than killing them outright. I supposed the Arcane Council wanted to take prisoners alive so that they could question them and find out exactly what the hell this gathering was all about, while the renegade fighters didn’t want to clearly show their hand by actually killing someone from the Council.

Rick cleared the final stretch of lawn of Council henchmen with a nicely executed Earth Surge, which sent a rolling ripple of soil, rock, and grass outward and flung two female Arcane Council goons into the log wall of the ranch house and knocked them out cold.

Happily, on making it to the back of the massive log mansion, we found Reginald Chaosbane himself, along with Mort, Igor, and a handful of other rebels.

Reginald was lolling on the low stone wall of a raised flowerbed that contained a selection of leafless fruit trees. He had his flying goggles strapped to his head once more and was wrapped in a large sheepskin coat, which made him look like the dashing parody of a World War II fighter pilot.

“Ahoy there, mateys!” he called merrily, casually deflecting a wayward spell with a gesture of his long-fingered hand and sending it back at a centaur who had stuck his human torso around the corner of the ranch house. The spell struck the burly creature in the chest, and he shuddered and juddered and let out a few high-pitched squeaks like someone who had unexpectedly found their meat truffles connected to a running car battery.

“Ahoy there, your Headmastership,” Barry said in return.

Reginald Chaosbane looked around, in the manner of someone who had just that minute realized he was lounging in the middle of a pitched battle.

“Hm, I don’t think much of this,” he said, a slight frown on his face.

“Me neither!” Igor agreed. One end of his wild mustache was smoldering gently, and he was missing an eyebrow.

“That pussbroom of yours is on fire, Igor,” Damien said helpfully, conjuring a Fireball and lobbing it at a Council administrator who was taking cover behind a snowman. The snowman melted, and the Arcane Council member dived back around the side of the ranch house.

Igor’s eyes crossed as he examined his slowly burning mustache. “So it is,” he said. He extracted a tightly rolled cigarillo and held the end to his mo, lit it, and puffed it into life.

“Yes, I think it’s worth us—what’s the air-pirate phrase I’m looking for, Barry?” Reginald said.

“Weigh anchor, sir?” Barry supplied.

“That’s my man,” Reginald said. “You get these ships ready, and I’ll call our people to man the lifeboats and splice the mainbrace… or just get on board.”

“Aye, sir,” said Barry.

Reginald Chaosbane wrapped his own throat in his fingers, almost like he was trying to strangle himself. In a voice that was suddenly magnified a thousandfold, he said, “All those who are with me, who are set on joining the cause of the Twin Spirits, make your way to the ships! We weigh anchor, push off, and get the fuck out of here in two minutes!”

“How are people supposed to know where the ships are?” Nigel asked. “I can’t even see…”

He tailed off and looked over my shoulder. He took off his spectacles, polished them on his shirt, and replaced them on his nose.

“... any ships,” he finished.

I turned, crouching as a sudden spray of poisonous yellow mana needles scythed overhead, punching into the second story of the ranch house and making the windows run like molten sugar.

Barry had called forth the ships, just as easily as he said he would be able to.

I wasn’t sure what gear he had needed to retrieve from the dungeon of the frat house, or what the schematics contained that he had taken from the library, but they had done the job.

As a layman of all things nautical, the spectral ships looked to me almost exactly like the schooners that pirates back on Earth used in the 16th and 17th century, during the Golden Age of Piracy.

The ship nearest to me was a double-masted affair, with ghostly green sails that flapped in a nonexistent breeze. I had no idea what all the goddamn sails were called except for the mainsail and the foresail.

It was also floating in the air, something which I assumed hardly any pirate ships had done back on my world. A series of rope ladders hung down from its decks to the snowy, spell-scarred lawn. The whole vessel emitted the same ghostly glow that the poltergeists themselves let off, although not so intensely.

I reached out and touched one of the ropes, which hung a foot from my face. Despite the alchemical glow that it emitted, it felt like normal rope under my fingers. The whole massive craft looked more solid than either Buttuck or Barry, somehow. Though it was engulfed in a phantasmic aura, it looked to be crafted of real timber underneath.

I mentioned this to Barry, as renegade fighters began swarming up the rope ladders while their fellows covered them from the ground.

“Aye, sir,” Barry said, looking up at the ship, his gaping skull sockets nevertheless managing to convey a love and admiration for the huge floating hulks. “Aye, they’re solid enough to exist in this world, to carry and house mortals here, yet there’s more than enough of the eldritch in ‘em to ferry us all safely into the Spectral Realm.”

“How many of them are there in the, ah, fleet?” I asked.

“We’ve eight ships here, sir,” the poltergeist said. “More than enough to carry all those who need carrying.”

Janet, Alura, Cecilia, and Enwyn all dashed around the corner at that point, the ground at their feet being eaten up and melted to goo by a hail of dive-bombing magical birds.

I conjured a Flame Barrier over the top of the fleeing women as they ran for the ship nearest me. The dive-bombing birds to explode in splashes of orange and red plasma against the shield. When they had all expended themselves against the shield, I let fly with a succession of Blazing Bolts that ripped toward the Arcane Council thugs who had been chasing the girls as they retreated. The Blazing Bolts detonated like mortar rounds in front of the oncoming civil servants, propelling one shrieking through the air and forcing the others back around the corner.

“Aye,” Buttuck said, talking loudly over the explosions and screams and sizzling cracks that were getting closer and closer as the Arcane Council harried the rebels and closed in on the ships. “Aye, these are fine air-pirating craft, Mr. Mauler, sir. None better.”

“Good to know,” I said distractedly, aiming with my staff and firing a couple of Paralyzing Zaps at a dryad woman who had scaled the roof of the ranch house. My spell hit her in the leg, and she tumbled down the slick roof and crashed through an ornate greenhouse.

“Aye, fast as a curry through an old man in the air they are, they’re easy to maneuver and they enjoy a large capacity for guns and cannons,” Buttuck blathered on. “A narrower hull and even shallower draft mean we can easily hide in shallow cloud estuaries and escape our enemies if it comes to a chase.”

“Great,” I said, watching as the dryad I had just knocked from the roof staggered to her feet, aimed her cudgel vector at me, but was abruptly wrenched off her feet by a Venus flytrap the size of a giraffe that had apparently been residing in the greenhouse.

“The downside,” Buttuck continued, “was that it couldn’t hold as much booty or crew.”

Nigel took off into the air, firing eye-stinging blasts of wind at any enemy that showed themselves, and Rick began to climb ponderously up one of the rope ladders.

“And ye’ll nay find a better captain than Captain Chillgrave here,” Buttuck continued, jerking a thumb at Barry, while Bradley and Damien climbed nimbly up the rope ladders.

Only a few rebels were left on the ground now. The rest had scaled the ladders and taken ship and were now peppering spells down on the remaining Arcane Council henchmen and women.

“Now, this here situations reminds me o’ a time when—” Buttuck started up, but the bounty hunting Chaosbane, Mort cut across him.

“I’m not sure if now is the time for anecdotes,” Mort said amiably to the poltergeist as he sent a fizzling burst of Chaos Magic toward a pair of Council members hot on the tail of a young, purple haired djinn woman sprinting for one of the far spectral schooners. Mort’s spell lanced into the snow around the pair of men. The snow rose up and crashed down on them like a miniature tidal wave, sending them rolling away and out of sight.

“Mort’s right,” Igor said, smoke curling out of his nostrils as he pointed at a nearby statue that I assumed he thought was Mort. “I was always under the impression that dead men tell no tales, Buttuck. So let’s stop it with your lip-swinging and get the fuck out of here!”

Igor, Mort, and I raced up the ladders that were slowly inching upward as the spectral ship began to ascend slowly into the air.

Barry and Buttuck, who were not encumbered by such mundane things as physics, zoomed up to the quarterdeck.

“Where are the others?” I asked Enwyn. “Odette, Madame Xel, Mallory, Leah?”

“They’re safe on the other ships.”

“Great,” I said with a sigh.

Chapter 6

Life in Avalonia had thrown a lot my way. I had experienced a lot of crazy-ass shit that I hadn’t so much as dreamed about back on Earth, let alone thought that I’d ever live through. Even after all the nutty escapades that me and my friends had been on, I couldn’t stop a smile of childlike delight at standing on the actual deck of an actual flying pirate ship.

I mean, come on!

The fleet of floating pirate ships rose into the late evening air, like eight gigantic luminous insects. An otherworldly wind puffed out the sails. Echoing booms and creaks came to my ears as the sails filled and strained at the ropes that held them to the wraithlike masts.

Now that Barry was on board and at the helm of the head ship, all eight spectral ships rose faster.

“Is he controlling the whole fleet?” I asked.

“It would appear so, yes,” Reginald Chaosbane said, coming to stand next to me at the rail.

The Headmaster and I looked down at the Chaosbane Ranch, which was getting slowly smaller and smaller. A lot of figures were running to and fro, robed and official. A few spells zipped and crackled up toward us, but it appeared that the ships had inbuilt anti-mana shields, or some such defense system, because the spells burst apart when they were about ten yards from the hulls.

“I’m sorry about your pad, sir,” I said as I watched a bunch of mages blast the door in and storm the house.

There was a gruff snort from behind the Headmaster and I, the sort of sound a hog might make while trying to clear its throat of a particularly stubborn bit of pumpkin.

“Bah, damned Council scum!” Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock snarled, hobbling up on his walking stick to stand beside us and peer down at the mages entering his house. “It’s not the first time that the establishment has bust their way onto the Chaosbane Ranch.”

“Nor, I imagine, will it be the last,” Aunt Ruth said, gliding up to stand on my other side. The milfy matriarch of the Chaosbane clan, clad in her usual collection of skirts and with her hair curled and piled on her head, pressed in close beside me. She had an ermine shawl clasped around her elegant shoulders, but it did not quite cover the luscious buxom tits that threatened to spill out of the top of her dress.

I had been refraining from bedding my companions, so it might just have been my overeager imagination that made me think that I could feel the press of a garter through the skirts that were squashed up against my own thigh.

“Still,” I said, attempting to keep my mind out of Aunt Ruth’s cleavage, “it sucks that they’re most likely going to tear the place apart.”

“Bah!” Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock said again, spraying spit out into the wind. “Why do you think that we built a log cabin in the middle of forested land, eh, Mauler? Those trees aren’t there just to look pretty and give us a bit of privacy! They’re building materials, lad! It’s because the Chaosbanes are always blowing up, setting fire, dissolving, or otherwise wrecking the ruddy place. Happens every couple of generations or so. Barry!”

The poltergeist was busy at the helm and appeared not to hear the oldest member of the Chaosbane clan. Buttuck, on the other hand, swept down from the rigging.

“Aye, small crusty one, sir?” he said.

Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock gave the spectral first mate a mean look.

“This damn ship have any guns on it?” he barked.

“Aye, sir,” Buttuck said.

“In that case, let’s roll them out and give those buffoons down there a damned good hammering!” Gorlbadock said.

Buttuck looked at Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock, then up at Barry at the helm, and then down at me. He appeared torn at having to make such a large call.

“Do as he says, Buttuck,” I said. “May as well give them hell before we go.”

Buttuck nodded his head and was just about to obey when Barry called out from where he was floating by the massive, ornate steering wheel.

“Pursuit off the port bow!” he cried in a thin, wailing voice that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on-end.

I looked to the left of the front of our ship where Barry was pointing with his skeletal thin arm in its voluminous seaman’s coat. At the same time, I heard Igor ask no one in particular, “There’s port in the bow? How marvelous!”

Off to our left, skimming low from out behind a headland that partly screened the taller buildings of the capital of Manafell, came half a dozen, low, single-masted ships.

“Is that the Arcane Council?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

Buttuck had procured a collapsible telescope from somewhere on his ghostly body and was peering through it.

“Aye,” he said, “that be the Arcane Council right enough, sir.”

I turned to the Headmaster, who was gazing out with some interest at the approaching ships.

“Sir, how do we get to this Spectral Realm?” I asked. “I mean. Exactly what do we have to do to reach it? I’m assuming that we don’t simply sail through the sky until we reach some floating sign that reads ‘Welcome to Fabulous Spectral Realm.’”

Reginald Chaosbane raised one eyebrow at me, and his cunning eyes twinkled.

“No,” he said, “but there’s a certain cheesy glamor to that, isn’t there?”

“So…?” I asked.

“So, we have to reach a certain number of knots—a certain speed. I am just a landlubber, mate, but I believe that at this appointed speed, the bow of Captain Chillgrave’s spectral ships are designed to cleave space-time in the same manner that a normal ship cuts through waves of a certain strength and resistance.”

Unbidden to my mind, a mental picture of the DeLorean reaching eighty-eight miles per hour and with 1.21 gigawatts of power flashed and faded in front of my eyes. I grinned.

“I think I follow you, sir,” I said. “So, it’s just a matter of reaching that speed before those Arcane Council vessels intercept us or bring us down? Just a matter of time, really?”

Reginald Chaosbane clapped me on the shoulder. For such a slender and roguish man, he had a lot of power behind him.

“This whole damned thing we call life is just a matter of time, my dear fellow!” he cried joyously, flashing me a madman’s smile.

Barry, who had been looking up at the masts and sails and touching a rope here and there, suddenly let out a screech of unadulterated rage.

“What’s got him by the short and curlies?” Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock grumbled, grabbing a hold of the rail as the ship gave a lurch.

“Ah,” Reginald Chaosbane said, “I was wondering how long it would take our dear captain to realize that the Arcane Council has infringed upon his copyright.”

Barry was hopping from foot to foot, managing to do so even while floating three feet above the deck, and shaking his bony fist at the oncoming ships.

“I designed those damned sloops,” he bellowed, “and now those scurvy dogs are using them against me? This will not stand, I tell ye! Buttuck, roll out the cannons!”

“No prey, no pay!” Buttuck howled into the falling night, sounding more like a ghoul than he had done up to that point. It struck me then that, as fat and sloppy and meek as he might first appear, the first mate must have been a real bloodthirsty son of a bitch back when he was a living, breathing sky-pirate.

Forming like a coalescing mist, rows of enormous magical cannons, shaped like basilisks with wide open jaws, manifested themselves on the decks of all eight sky-pirate ships. They were four feet in diameter and equipped with rudimentary sights, just a circle and cross of wire set near the rear, and a gunner’s seat.

“You there!” Barry said. “Mr. Mauler, sir! Man a cannon, if ye please! And you fellows!” and the poltergeist pointed his skeletal finger at Damien, Nigel, Bradley, and Rick. “You do the same!”

“The wenches can make themselves useful too, Captain Chillgrave!” I said cheekily, indicating Janet, Cecilia, Enwyn, and Alura, and flashing them a good-natured smile.

“Aye, that they can, that they can!” Barry crowed. “Tis a brave new world we are livin’ in after all!”

Janet fetched me a soft slap on the back of the head as she dashed past to take up a seat on the cannon to my right.

As Enwyn hurried past, she whispered in a sultry voice in my ear, “That bit of sass will cost you, Justin. A price must be paid.”

I smiled and sighted down my cannon. I loved those kinds of prices. I looked forward to paying it.

On all the other seven ships, renegades were settling into the gunner seats of the basilisk cannons.

“Mateys!” Barry cried then, and his voice was no longer the voice of the subservient poltergeist, but Captain Chillgrave, founder of the house of Chillgrave, famed and feared sky-pirate of the cirro, alto, and stratocummulus.

“Mateys!” he cried again, and his voice magically boomed over all eight ships, “This is your Captain speaking! Welcome aboard. We are presently sailing at a height of five-thousand feet on this impromptu voyage to hell and back! We are expecting a bumpy ride and anticipate a time-bending arrival into the Spectral Realm whenever those bastard gods of ours deem it prudent. Now, batten down the hatches, pucker your bungholes, and… FIRE!”

The cannons along the portside of our flying pirate ships roared—literally roared like lions, like dragons. Clouds of cloying blue mana-vapor bloomed in the air and lit the undersides of the few clouds that were unfortunate enough to be passing us by at that exact moment. The manaballs, if that’s what they were, sped out to meet the oncoming Arcane Council sloops.

As all the gunners hadn’t figured out how to aim their cannons just yet, many of the manaballs missed their targets, going low, or high, or wide.

Through the cloud of ethereal blue vapor, I saw my manaball heading toward the aft end of the ship I had been aiming for. The sloop managed to tweak away from the oncoming missile, and it only just grazed the back of the poop deck, shearing away some railings and rigging and knocking only a single Council seaman overboard.

“Man, those things can move for something so big!” I yelled. The basilisk cannon in front of me vibrated as a fresh manaball formed in the firing chamber.

“Aye, sir, they’ve a large bowsprit which means an increased canvas area which, in turn, adds better maneuverability,” Buttuck told me. “The great advantage of the sloops over our bigger schooners is that they’re a mite quicker and can attack swiftly and get away faster.”

“Not if we blow them out of the sky,” I said through gritted teeth and yanked the cord that fired the cannon. It bucked under me once more, like a mustang. This time, my manaball smacked squarely into the rudder of the closing ship.

“That’s the spirit, Mr. Mauler, sir!” Captain Chillgrave yelled. “That’s the spirit, sir! We don’t need to sink the heathen bastards, but only hold ‘em at bay for a few more seconds. We’re almost up to speed, sir!”

The sloop that I had clipped, now rudderless, veered to starboard and smashed into the ship traveling parallel to it. Even over the distance, I could hear the sound of screams as enemy mages plummeted from the rigging and fell through the sky. A few lucky Wind Mages bailed overboard and flew downward to try and catch their comrades before they were spread thinly over the snowy countryside below.

Answering shots came from the closing enemy sky vessels, but Barry’s schematics were clearly more advanced than the smaller sloops that the Arcane Council had built using his stolen designs.

“Shiver me timbers and never mind the barnacle on my oar, ye’ll have to get up earlier than that to get the better of a Chillgrave!” Barry cackled. He danced a jig as an enemy manaball hit our schooner’s shrouds and rebounded back toward the ship that had fired it like a giant, smoking rubber ball.

Further along, near the foremast, I heard Cecilia give a shrill warrior’s cry at her great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather’s words.

Purple and green lightning crackled up the bowsprit, along the hull and across the rigging. It bounded across the deck and hopped from the end of one cannon to the next.

“Yar, just when this sky battle and the thought of a handful of booty had got me to full mast!” Barry cried joyously. “‘Tis time for us to cut into the realm beyond!”

“Brace yourselves!” Buttuck cried.

My ears went numb, the world went quiet. There was an instant of extreme pressure, as if the schooner was trying to pierce through the skin of some galaxy-sized bubble.

And then, we were through.

I jerked in my gunner’s seat, though I wasn’t sure that the ghostly schooner moved at all.

Without warning, we were in full daylight: hot sun and warm wind. Salt spray misted my face. In utter disbelief, I perceived that we were no longer flying, but sailing along, the bow of the schooner cutting through a deep blue sea.

“Okay, I’m lost,” I said aloud.

The ship itself had lost its eldritch glamor, had become more real. Hard, solid wooden planks underfoot, the color that weathered wood should be. I could smell tar.

“Cast your eyes to stern, mateys and see what happens to sky-pirates who come ill-equipped to the Spectral Realm!” Captain Chillgrave cried above the snap of ropes and thrum of the wind in the rigging. “Two of the enemy rode our coattails through the rift.”

He was right. Two of the Arcane Barges had arrived here with us. From what I could make out, the mages on board looked just as flummoxed as I felt at this sudden change of scene.

The two single-masted sloops and all their crew simply erupted into an expanding cloud of twisted metal, flailing ropes, splintered planks, shattered beams, and pulped flesh. It wasn’t an explosion as such – there was no flame or smoke or magical discharge. They simply fragmented apart in an almost slow-motion display of wonderful carnage. A couple of eye-watering seconds later, as if the visual-effects team had run out of budget, the expanding clouds of mutilated mages and wrecked ships sucked back in on themselves into a twisted ball of debris and mortal remains and plopped quietly into the rolling ocean.

“My goodness,” Bradley Flamewalker said into the silence, “what the bloody hell happened there?”

“That is what occurs when your vessel is not primed correctly to dance in and out of the Spectral Realm,” Captain Chillgrave said. “Regular vessels and anyone not contained within a spectral vessel cannot pass through the waters of the Spectral Realm.”

I looked up, and my jaw dropped.

Barry was no longer the skeletal poltergeist I had always known. Here, in the Spectral Realm, his bare bones had taken on flesh, his empty eye sockets filled—although one was covered with a patch. His clothes were no longer rags, but merely stained and frayed.

Buttuck looked more flesh than spirit too. He was fat and pasty, but most definitely more solid than he had been. His frizzy hair was salt-and-pepper colored and blew this way and that like an old dandelion in the wind.

They both looked alive here in the Spectral Realm.

But Captain Barry Chillgrave also looked weak, like the incredible vitality that powered him as a poltergeist back in Avalonia had been drained away.

Barry caught me looking at him and smiled wearily. I was so used to seeing him smiling all the time, that being the default facial expression for dudes who had more visible skull than face, that it was weird to see the guy with lips.

“Aye, Mr. Mauler,” he croaked in his piratical voice, “We have some work to do before old Barry is shipshape and we’re able to get all you fine folk to the Stronghold of the Twin Spirits.”

“You’re our guide here, Barry,” I reminded him. “Plus, I imagine we need you to get home again.”

Barry nodded. “I’ll be all right, sir, I’ll be all right. Being a poltergeist in the living world of Avalonia gives a piratical scamp like me some half-decent powers, but taking leave of the Spectral Realm, as a spirit, for as long as I have… That plays havoc with a shade’s ectoplasmic composition.”

I didn’t really have a clue what Barry Chillgrave was talking about, but there was no denying that he looked like a hatful of assholes that had been run over.

“Are you alright, Barry?” I asked, stepping up close to the more solid version of the most feared captain ever to sail the skies of Avalonia and smuggle magical contraband from one realm to the next and back again.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he replied. I’d have to take his word for it—he looked anything but fine.

I pursed my lips and looked out at the tolling expanse of blue that surrounded us: blue sky, blue sea and, in the blue distance, a dark blue smudge that spoke to me of land. “How do we find the Stronghold?” I asked.

Barry removed his tricorn hat with its enormous feather and ran a hand through his greasy hair. It had always looked green to me on Avalonia, as had the rest of him, but I saw now that it was jet black. “I need power, skipper, power,” he said. The pirate captain thought for a moment, looking around at all my gathered friends standing on the main deck of the sky-schooner, which had now become, well, just a schooner.

“We divide our most trusted crew amongst the ships,” the pirate captain said to me. “Makin’ sure that there is at least one able-bodied seadog aboard each who knows how to conjure a homing phoenix so that we can communicate with one another. Once we’ve a few solid men and women of conviction on each vessel, we set off on different courses. We’ll cover more ground that way, and the Pirate Isles are rife with coves, inlets, and waterways that will take us a long time to cover.”

“And in the meantime,” I said pointedly, “where will the crew of your ship be heading? I can tell that there is somewhere specific that you have in mind to restore your vitality.”

Barry grinned. For a moment, I could see the ghoulish skeletal smile of his shining through the wrinkled flesh of his face.

“Aye, skipper, that there be, that there be,” he said. He replaced his hat and fluffed the feather. “You, me, and whoever you choose to come with us, will set sail for the Pirate Queen.”

Chapter 7

As Barry suggested, the core group of trusted rebels on his ship were divided up amongst the other seven vessels, for peace of mind.

To his great delight and chest-swelling pride, Buttuck was given command of his very own schooner by Captain Chillgrave. The fat first mate, now with a complete head, swept his bandana off and bowed as low as his expansive gut and tight coat would allow.

“Ye’ll not regret this, Cap’n,” he said after Barry had delivered this order to him. “Have no fear, sir, I’ll make sure that we weather any storms the Spectral Realm should think to throw at us. I’ll make ye right proud, Cap’n, you don’t worry yourself on that score, sir!”

“Ah, get your tongue out o’ my sphincter, will ye, Buttuck, and man your wheel,” Barry snapped, but he looked pleased at the fawning nonetheless.

Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock and Aunt Ruth took command of a ship each. Neither wanted to share the command with the other, and I knew for a fact that either of them could handle a whole crew of renegades quite easily on their own. They had doubtless had more trouble with an entire houseful of Chaosbanes.

Mort and Igor shared command of another.

“Why do Reginald and Leah get to have a ship each all to themselves, Chillgrave?” Igor demanded. “Yes, some might argue that Reginald is overqualified for piratical command, what with being a genius, a professional wastrel, and serial fornicator, but you realize Leah’s a woman!”

Leah Chaosbane, sitting with legs akimbo across one of the cannons, stuck out her long pink tongue and twirled her long pink hair with a finger. She had found a pair of pirate’s boots from somewhere that reached up to mid-thigh, and she had unraveled her holey baby blue knitted sweater because of the Carribean warmth of the Spectral Realm. It now showed off an expanse of pale stomach that caught the eye and held it, while simultaneously kicking the imagination into overdrive.

“Aye, I see she’s a woman, ye damned rapscallion!” Barry retorted. “That’s precisely why she gets her own ship. Being a Chaosbane woman, I bet she’s got double the brains, cunning, guile than you and Mort have combined.”

Mort looked a little aggrieved at this but said nothing. Igor, on the other hand, whispered to his bounty hunting cousin, “Rapscallion? Is that some kind of small onion, Mort?”

I had the fraternity boys take command of the seventh schooner, although they had misgivings about breaking up the band.

“I’ll feel better with you guys all together,” I told them, when Rick voiced an objection to my idea. “Only the gods know what crazy shit the Chaosbanes might get their ships caught up in. At least with you guys, I’ll know that there’s one boat apart from mine that will be staying on task.”

Bradley clapped me on the arm. “I won’t lie to you, Justin, you’re going to be missing out. I’ve really raised my game when it comes to cooking after winning that contest. I bet I can put together something rather scrumptious in the galley.”

“What can you do with fish, Bradley?” Rick asked. “I’m an island boy, and if there are fish to be caught in these waters, I’ll hook them.”

Bradley’s eyes shone as he rifled through the recipe book of his mind.

“Rick,” he said, “the more pertinent question would be: what can’t I do with fish?”

Janet, Cecilia, Enwyn, and Alura the Gemstone Princess all came with me and Barry aboard the ship that he tried to tell me was called the Flying Dutch Rudder. I refused to call it by that moniker.

“And why did you not trust us to command our own ship may I ask, darling?” Cecilia asked me as we watched our small fleet head off in their separate directions. “You do recall that I’m actually related to Captain Chillgrave here.”

“And I’m a princess, Justin,” Alura said, giving me a pretty sparkling pout, the likes of which only someone who is basically a walking crystal can pull off. “I’m used to command, whether it be the carrot or the stick.”

I grinned around at Janet, Cecilia, Alura, and Enwyn.

“What can I say? I wanted you ladies with me for purely selfish reasons. I mean, what happens if we get becalmed for a week? How in the world will we amuse ourselves?”

Janet laughed, bit her lip, and shook her brunette head.

“Jeez, but you are a smart motherfucker, aren’t you?” she said.

“I try,” I said, spreading my hands and winking.

“Do you think everyone will be safe in these waters?” Enwyn asked Barry.

Captain Chillgrave was leaning against the wheel and surveying the flapping sails. He shrugged and spat over the side. “Ain’t nowhere safe in this realm or the realms beyond. But there’s no going back now.”

We set off across the sea, heading toward the smudge of blue land that became clearer and greener the closer we got to it.

The thing about sea travel, on an old schooner like ours, is that it isn’t what you’d call fast. It’s like the dial-up internet of travel, but with less noise and more time for peaceful reflection.

I sat at the prow, cushioned against a thick coil of rope, and watched the land come steadily closer. Around me sat Cecilia, Alura, and Enwyn, while Janet lay on the deck with her head in my lap and dozed.

The sun was warm on our faces, making a nice change from the frigid cold that we had left behind at the Chaosbane ranch. The sound of the sea was a murmuring whisper in our ears, telling us secrets in a language that none of us understood.

Barry occasionally stumped down to see how we were doing—he did not float, not in the Spectral Realm.

“Did you miss it, Barry?” I asked him, when he had come down to peer over the side and make sure that all our rebel crew would be ready to man the mana cannons if required.

“Miss what, sir?” he asked me.

“All this,” I said, gesturing around. “The creak of the shrouds and the fucking… tangy smell of the brine, and all that other stuff?”

Barry grinned at me and adjusted his eyepatch a fraction.

“Aye, I missed it, sir, although I didn’t perceive just how much until now. The sea can be a bitter, cruel bitch, but she can teach ye a thing or three too. If you’re going through difficult times today, hear the ocean hiss against the hull, hold steady. It will change soon. The wind in the sails says: If you are experiencing smooth sailing and easy times now, brace yourself, matey. It will change soon. The only thing you can be certain of is change, Mr. Mauler, be it good or bad.”

“That’s cute, Captain Chillgrave,” Alura said drowsily, from where she sat looking out at the gently undulating horizon.

Barry shrugged a crooked shrug and peered out toward the growing block of land that had defined itself into an island with more islands behind it.

“We’ve all of us got salt in our veins, miss,” he said. “In our tears and sweat and spit. That’s why I reckon every man jack of us has an affinity with the ocean, no matter how small it is. When we look out on that briny deep, we can’t help but think that we’re looking out on the place that we came from, somehow.”

“Being on the ocean is like being in a bar,” I mused.

“How’s that?” asked Janet.

“Turns everyone into a fucking philosopher,” I said.

Barry barked a laugh, but the sound died into a gurgle in his scrawny throat.

“What’s up, Barry?” I asked, catching the suddenly intense look on the pirate captain’s face.

“A sail, skipper,” he said. “A sail is what’s up.”

At that moment, the lookout on the ship’s top cried out, “Sail in front!”

“That’s ‘sail ho’, ye jelly-boned, syphilitic streak of piss,” Barry grumbled. “Don’t nobody teach no one nothing no more?”

It was still another hour before the speck of white solidified into a ship, and another half hour after that before Barry could make out that it was most definitely a pirate ship.

“Nothing to worry about just yet, mateys,” he told the crew, when some of the other renegades started chattering a little nervously amongst themselves. “The Spectral Realm is the home of pirates, smugglers, and back-stabbing spit weasels from all the realms over. That being said, there is an understanding amongst those who seek the Pirate Queen. Let’s see what these scabby-assed merchants of the sea want with us, eh?”

The crew settled down at this.

“Might want to make sure you and the lasses here are manning some of the cannons,” Barry muttered to me as he stumped off toward the poop deck. “Just in case, sir.”

“Just in case,” I said. I thought I knew what that meant.

Barry did not try to run from the oncoming ship. I figured only a ship with a captain that was scared or carrying a cargo worth stealing would flee.

Eventually, the pirate ship was within hailing distance. It passed slowly off our starboard side, and the girls and I were able to see the motley collection of vagabonds that populated its decks. They looked exactly as I had expected them to: swaggering men and women festooned with tattoos and gaudy jewelry that looked like it had been raided from a dress-up store.

They whooped and hollered at us as they drew alongside and tossed grappling hooks over to our schooner so that the two ships could be hauled in close together. Looking around, I noted that the rebel mages who made up our crew looked unimpressed by the piratical theatrics we were being treated to. I reckoned that was what happened when you followed the lead of a man like Reginald Chaosbane. Everyone else looked normal and a little less colorful in comparison.

Barry was standing proudly at the wheel, the ridiculously large feather plume on his hat blowing in the wind and the buttons on his faded red surcoat sparkling dully. When the ships came together and a couple of planks were extended over from the other ship to ours, he walked out to stand at the head of the staircase that ran down from the poop to the main deck.

A big, ugly woman strode across one of the gangplanks first and deposited herself amidships. It might be more accurate to say that she tapped her way over really, because instead of booted feet, she walked on a couple of peglegs.

I blinked a couple of times, trying to make sense of the woman’s proportions. It was kind of impressive, the way that such a beefy woman, with thighs almost as thick as Rick’s, could balance on such skinny peglegs. She was dressed in an assortment of ill-matched garments, superior in quality to those worn by her crew. A hat was perched on her head and on it was a feather of such enormity that it must surely have come from a roc or some other mythical avian beast. On closer inspection of her face, I noticed that parts of it bore a striking resemblance to the visage of a hyena. Was she a gnoll of some kind? I figured she might well have been at least two parts gnoll and four parts human.

“A fuckin’ fine plan not trying to run from us,” she said, in an accent that was at once piratical and strangely reminiscent of Canada. “The last thing I felt like doing was firing a shot across your bow and then chasing! I’m not a one for chasing, me. I don’t have the physique for it!”

She slapped her succulent guts with a hand, and the movement sent ripples into outlying areas of her body. She laughed at her own joke. Her crew, who had filtered across the gangplanks after her, laughed with her, like good little sycophants.

“Or the legs,” someone from our crew said, and I realized that it had been me.

The lardy woman’s eyes snapped across to me. They narrowed, making her look less like the female gnoll addicted to pie that I thought she was and more like a pig in a wig that’s just been asked to calculate the square root of pi.

“What the fuck was that, you dung munching crab bucket?” she asked me in a low, dangerous voice.

I raised my own voice a little, so that my words carried over the assembled crews.

“I said, you don’t have the legs for a chase either,” I reiterated, pointing at the twin pegs.

The pirate captain’s five chins quivered with indignation. She drew in a couple of labored breaths, spit spraying down the front of her already filthy coat. Her eyes narrowed to slits so that she now looked like a pig in a wig that had been asked to calculate the square root of pi and was now having a severe allergic reaction to something.

“And who,” she sneered, “the fuck are you?”

I waved cheerfully at her and said, “Justin Mauler. And you are?” My hand ached with the need to summon my staff and cast this slug of a woman into the sea in pieces.

“Captain Nutlee,” the gnoll sailor replied. “Captain Dora ‘Chopsticks’ Nutlee. You may have heard of me.”

“Nope,” I said.

Captain Nutlee’s nostrils flared.

“Tell me, Justin Mauler, are you the captain of this ‘ere vessel?” she asked. “For I’ve a mind to mount your head on the wall of my captain’s cabin once I’ve hexed it from your shoulders, but only if you’re the leader of this rabble.”

There was the unmistakable rustling of mages on both sides shuffling into fighting positions at these words—the ever so subtle sound of vectors being removed from pockets and belts, of cuffs being pushed up and knives slipped from sheaths.

“I’m not the captain,” I said. “I don’t have a big enough hat to play that role.”

“Then who does?” Chopsticks Nutlee growled.

“That’d be me.”

Captain Barry Chillgrave stepped off the top step of the poop deck and out into thin air. He walked out into space, over the heads of his crew, and then descended regally. He came to stand next to me, both of us were facing the hideous excrescence that was Captain Nutlee.

If I had thought that I had seen a commanding look in his one visible eye before, then I had been sorely mistaken. He was giving the other captain the kind of stone-cold killer look that would have turned a diamond back into coal.

There were a couple of little tapping noises, like someone thumping a pool cue twice on the deck, as Nutlee took a couple of involuntary steps backward.

“I’m the captain of this here schooner,” Barry said. He pointed upward, not taking his one smoldering eye off the gnoll in front of him. “Note the hat.”

Captain Nutlee’s hateful little eyes rolled upward, as did the rest of her crew. Then they slid down again.

“Aye, I’m the captain of this here tub,” Barry said, running his gaze across the other crew, “and I’ve done you the courtesy of offering our hospitality to you because I have always thought that there was an unspoken pact that there’d be no scrapping for those seeking the Pirate Queen.”

Captain Nutlee ran a pale tongue over her slightly green lips.

“Your name?” she croaked.

“The name’s Captain Barry Chillgrave,” Barry said. “You may have heard of me, Chopsticks Nutlee, though you might not recognize me. It strikes me that you might be a bit green to have sailed these waters whilst I was still plying the piratical trade.”

There was a chorus of ‘shiver me timbers!’ and ‘blow me down!’ from the crew that had boarded our ship.

“You… you can’t be Capt’n Barry Chillgrave,” Captain Nutlee said in a disbelieving voice. “Not the Capt’n Barry Chillgrave.”

“I can,” Barry replied, “and I am.”

“They said you was dead,” Nutlee said.

“I am fucking dead,” Barry replied. “We’re all fucking dead, ain’t we?”

Chopsticks Nutlee shook her flabby head and looked around at the rebel crew. She looked visibly shaken, like she had seen a ghost—which for a specter probably compounded the shock somewhat.

“This lot ain’t dead,” she said in a weak voice, gesturing at the mages among Barry’s crew.

“Ye be on the money with that observation, Nutlee,” Barry said. “Might be more than just shit inside your skull after all, eh?”

A slight flush crept up the fat wodge of Captain Nutlee’s neck. “If you were any other gobshite, I’d have your guts for garters,” she growled, in an obvious attempt to recapture the momentum in the conversation.

“Aye, matey, but I ain’t just anyone else, am I?” Barry said in a loud voice, addressing not just Captain Nutlee, but her crew too. “I’m fucking Capt’n Barry fuckin’ Chillgrave, the maddest, smartest, most dangerous ne’er-do-well to ever sail the Spectral Seas. The canniest inter-realm smuggler there ever was or probably ever will be. The man and poltergeist that built a house o’ gold on a mountain o’ bones and who, in my younger days, was the sort of cracked bastard who’d throw rocks at the stars even at the risk of bringing down the bloody sky!”

I wouldn’t have ever guessed that the cackling, sexual innuendo-loving poltergeist from whom I had purchased my first vector could be capable of pouring out such rugged eloquence, but Barry was doing it. In a single breath, he had effectively diffused the tension that Captain Nutlee had so effortlessly conjured between the two crews.

Even if he hadn’t calmed things down, he had definitely sowed the seed of doubt in many of the minds of Captain Chopsticks Nutlee’s crew. I could see now that most of them would have been only too glad to hop on over to us and sail under the famed Captain Chillgrave.

“Well, Capt’n Chillgrave,” Nutlee said, in a tone dripping in oil, “now that we’ve established that our two ships are on cordial terms, you were saying that you were in search of the Pirate Queen or some such…?”

Barry looked around at the rebels still gathered around us.

“All right boys and girls,” he said, “I think it’s safe to say that there’ll be no exchange of manaballs just yet. Why don’t you all piss off and play dominoes and have a tot or tow of rum or something while I swap the news with my fellow captain here, eh?”

Our renegade crew didn’t need telling twice. They might have been staunch fighters when the situation called for it, but they weren’t about to get into a sea battle for no reason.

Especially when the alternative was booze and boardgames.

The girls and I hung around Barry, while everyone else, from both crews, wandered off to take up various positions of relaxation, although I noticed that hands did not stray too far from vectors.

Just in case.

“Who is this Mauler and these four buxom wenches, Chillgrave?” Nutlee asked, looking down the squashed deformity that she probably called a nose at me, Alura, Enwyn, Janet, and Cecilia.

“Never ye mind who they are, Chopsticks Nutlee,” Barry said. “Suffice to say they’ve more brains apiece than you and all your hands combined.”

Nutlee ground her teeth but said nothing.

Under the veneer of piratical disgruntlement and injured pride, I saw the light of fan worship shining in the eyes of Captain Nutlee. I abruptly realized that Barry was acting in exactly the cocksure, arrogant, swaggering way that the captain of the other ship expected him to act. If I hadn’t known any better, I would have thought that Nutlee had a crush on Barry.

The thought made me cringe.

“Now, ‘scuse me for saying so, Captain Chillgrave,” Nutlee said, “but you look like a spirit in need of some rejuvenation.”

Barry smiled. “Aye, rejuvenation,” he said, “and plunder is what I seek.”

“Plunder?” Captain Nutlee asked, her slightly pointed and droopy ears pricking up at the word.

“Aye, o’ course plunder, what else is it that we pirates live for, do you think?” Barry said. “I want to plunder and to replenish my powers so that I can get my crew back on task and regain my full might.”

“Well, if you need me to point you in the right direction, I’d me more than willing to help out such an esteemed individual as yourself, Captain Chillgrave,” said Chopsticks Nutlee graciously.

“Would ye just?” Barry said with a mocking simper. “How positively upstanding and righteous of ye.” He snorted. “I’ll tell ye what I want from you, Nutlee. Rather than a finger in the right direction, I’ll be having you lead us to where I can get my hands on gold and a source of revitalization.”

The peg-legged captain slumped against the railing and regarded Barry through her watery red eyes. I could tell that she wanted to bite back against the way that Barry was trying to order her around, but she also obviously did not want to pass up the chance to render a service for so distinguished a figure as Captain Barry Chillgrave.

“Ye sound like you have something in mind already, matey,” she said.

“Aye, I do at that,” said Barry. “The most important thing is to get myself shipshape again, and to do that, I’ll need a lot of death energy.”

Captain Nutlee wagged her head sagely, but I had no idea what death energy referred to. I looked over at Enwyn, but she simply nodded back in Barry’s direction.

“So, you’ll be thinking o’ finding a sunken wreck where all hands went down,” said Chopsticks Nutlee, “or else a—”

“A crypt, aye,” cut in Barry, “or, better yet, crypts. Crypts have a great deal o’ death energy and a great deal o’ gold too.”

Captain Dora ‘Chopsticks’ Nutlee’s piggy eyes were suddenly alight with avarice.

“And once you have your fill of the death energy,” she said, “we split the gold fifty-fifty?”

“Almost full marks for you, Nutlee,” Barry said. “Two out of three ain’t bad. When I get my fill of the death juice, we shall split the gold indeed, though it’ll be seventy-thirty in my favor.”

“Sixty-forty,” Nutlee countered.

“I must be getting soft in my extreme old age,” Barry said. “Done.”

Captain Nutlee spat green phlegm into the palm of one flabby hand, but before she extended it, her face was lit from within by the flame of cunning. Her eyes narrowed once more, and she licked her pale lips again. She darted a glance at me and the girls and then looked back at Barry.

“An idea has just leapt to mind, Captain Chillgrave,” she said.

“Can you make it jump out of your mouth so that we can all hear it?” Barry said.

I snorted. That was a good one.

“Well,” said Nutlee, “Cupido Island, a place that I know you have heard of before of course, was once the place of many ritual sacrifices.”

“Aye, mortals of all kinds were sacrificed to every god and his dog there,” Barry said slowly. “That’s the blasted Pirate Queen’s inner sanctum. Where she goes to worship, if I recall correctly.”

“Aye, that ye do, that ye do,” Captain Nutlee said in a soft voice. “The Pirate Queen’s been doing mighty well since you last sailed these waters, Captain Chillgrave. She’s erected a castle there… a private castle where she can worship and conduct ceremonies in peace and solitude, so the tales say. This castle is literally made out of gold, Chillgrave, pure gold. Gold bars piled like bricks!”

“And what are you suggesting?” I asked, pulling the pirate captain’s gaze to me. “That Captain Chillgrave here can take the death energy from this Cupido, and then the gold is still split sixty-forty?”

“Aye,” Nutlee said, “but there’ll be a fuck load more of it to split, you see?”

“I see,” Barry said.

“All we have to do is get through the Queen’s Army, and kill the Queen,” Captain Nutlee said, leaning back nonchalantly against the rail. “And for one of your reputation, Capt’n Chillgrave, surely that wouldn’t be so very much of a stretch?”

“Sounds simple enough,” Barry said, stroking his ratty mustache thoughtfully. The light of adventure was shining in his one eye.

The two pirate captains began discussing schemes and policies. I detached myself and led the girls away. I had never been much for a plan guy. They usually only ended up surviving for the first fourteen seconds of any mission in Avalonia, so I wasn’t too phased about missing out on the strategy planning. If your definition of a plan was a loose string of essentially deficient observations and guesses, held together by gut-feelings, indecision, and luck, then I had been part of some fucking brilliant ones.

Better to fly by the seat of your pants, I thought—that way you’re not pissed off when you’re well laid plan turns into a game of hide-and-go-fuck-yourself.

“What do you ladies think?” I asked Janet, Alura, Cecilia, and Enwyn when we were standing at the bow and out of earshot of all the other crew members.

“If I’m honest,” Janet said, “I’m not sure if I like the sound of being all, you know, piratey.”

“This sounds kind of, you know, unethical, darling,” said the blonde-haired, blue-eyed vision that was Cecilia Chillgrave. “Killing a bunch of people to get gold, if that’s what it comes down to… I’m not sure that’s really our style.”

I nodded and looked over at Barry and Captain Nutlee. They were snickering and cackling like a couple of mustache-twirling villains over by the rail, clearly in the throes of a treasure induced micro-orgasm.

“I’ll think of something different, a way that we can do what’s needed without killing anyone that doesn’t have it coming,” I said. “But, right now, I don't want to break up the little lovefest that Barry and that fucking revolting specimen with the chopstick legs have got going on over there. Barry is a celebrity, but he’s weak.”

Enwyn nodded gravely. “Right, and as soon as that glamor wears off, I’m willing to bet that old Captain Sticklegs over there will start thinking how she might garner a bit of fame for herself by rubbing Barry out of existence.”

I nodded. “My thinking exactly. Best not to rock the boat right now.”

Janet rolled her eyes and pinched me.

“What?” I said, pretending to be clueless about that terrible pun I had just thrown out.

“Well, if you ask me, I think this is a great idea,” Alura said unexpectedly. “I could see myself being a pirate, in some ways. It’d be like ruling a little floating kingdom. Something that I have been born and bred for.”

She flashed me a smile and then looked shyly around her.

It was then that I noticed that many of Captain Nutlee’s pirates were looking at Alura with interest. I thought for a second that they were eyeing her up in the generic way that creeps the universe over ogle attractive women—that perverted, sexual way that causes maximum discomfort. Then, though, I realized that they weren’t really looking at any of the other girls, and they were all stunning in their individual ways.

“They’re just super into jewels and stuff,” Janet said in my ear, noticing where I was looking.

Understanding dawned for me. “Shit, and Alura is literally a walking, talking gemstone the size of a person,” I whispered back.

“Yep,” Janet affirmed.

As if to demonstrate the point, one of the new seamen swaggered over. He was a lanky little dude, a half-imp I thought him to be. He had bright red skin, a short mohawk, and severely punchable face.

I stepped in front of him before he could reach Alura.

“Yargh, matey,” he said in a squeaky voice, “I was hopin’ to exchange pleasantries with that shiny lass yonder.”

He pointed to Alura with his chin. I noticed that he had a little goatee adorning it.

“No,” I said.

“I mean her no harm, matey,” the half-imp said in a wheedling voice. “My intentions are quite honorable, I assure ye.”

I sighed. “Well,” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder and turning him politely but irresistibly around, “I called my guy, and he said the market is really messed up right now. We got way too much demand and not enough supply so, needless to say, we are completely out of fuck.”

The half-imp blinked at me. “What are ye talking about?” he asked, rubbing his two brain cells desperately together in the hope they might birth a third.

“Come back say… next week,” I said, “and I should be able to give a fuck about your intentions then.”

Chapter 8

Throughout my life, I was always one of those people who were entranced and intimidated by the ocean in equal measure. I could appreciate the boundless beauty of it, and it never ceased to get me thinking when confronted by it, but it also, on some primal level, really tickled that fearful respect in me. It came from that unnamed blob of common sense sitting at the base of our spine. The blob warns us of things that might do us ill, the survival instinct that we must have always had in us ever since we were cavemen.

I mentioned this healthy respect to Enwyn, Janet, Alura, and Cecilia as we sat in Barry’s captain’s cabin. We were enjoying a delicious meal whipped up by one of the rebels, who had been a cook and a spy in the kitchens of the Castle of Ascension.

“You don’t look scared to me,” Alura said, daintily picking at a side of the delicious and incongruously named orctopus fish.

“I’m not scared,” I said. “There’s nothing to be gained in this world by being scared. On the contrary, I'm as cool as a cucumber right now. As relaxed as anyone heading on a journey to steal the death energy and gold from under a Pirate Queen’s nose probably has the right to feel.”

“Then what are you saying?” Janet asked. “You just feel uneasy out at sea?”

“Better to say that I feel aware of a background marrow-level dread,” I said, and the others laughed.

“I think I understand what you’re getting at, darling,” Cecilia said, crossing her silky legs and leaning back in her chair. “You can respect something and fear it on some level, but still be happy to deal with it if you have to.”

“That’s right,” I agreed, through a mouthful of garlic-butter night clams. “That’s exactly it.”

“I get the same sort of feeling, darling,” Cecilia said. “That intuition that the sea is, basically, a primordial nada, with bottomless depths that are inhabited by snaggle-toothed, blind-eyed things that love to rise toward you at the rate a feather falls while you’re taking a dip.”

We all laughed again.

“You paint such a comforting picture, babe,” Janet said, draining her wine. “I’ll think about that next time I’m floating on my inflatable pink flamingo.”

“What’s an inflatable pink flamingo, darling?” Cecilia asked. “It sounds divine.”

Janet snorted. “I’ll bring you back one from Earth one day, girl.”

We were having a lovely evening. Despite all the talk of snaggle-toothed creatures and bottomless depths, I was finding our nocturnal sea voyage extremely restful just then. The seas were calm, and we were the beneficiaries, according to Captain Barry Chillgrave, of a fair and favorable wind.

Just on the edge of hearing, I could make out the calls of people and the lilt of a mandolin up on the deck, where most of the crew were having their dinner. There had been lanterns hung from the beams and rigging and a large trestle table pulled out.

The ship was moving up and down with even, gentle rocking motions. With the excellent meal that we were just finishing and the epic wine that Barry had stocked his ship with, I was feeling pretty damned content.

I looked around at the four women surrounding me. They were laughing and joking and teasing one another, making wild guesses at what Cupido Island and the Pirate Queen’s golden castle was going to be like. They were all looking exceptionally lovely in the light of the many beeswax tapers magically fastened around the room. Their skins glowed with healthy vitality—except for Alura, of course, who glittered and shone like a freaking breathtaking animated ice sculpture.

“What are you thinking about, Mr. Mauler?” Enwyn asked me softly, turning to look at me. Her blood red lips glistened in the ambient light, and her glasses flashed.

“I was just mulling over how it is that we all came to be here,” I said. “How I came to be sitting here… the luckiest fucking guy that probably ever walked the face of this world, or any world come to think of it.”

Enwyn smiled. “Yes,” she said as she watched Alura slap Janet good-naturedly on the thigh at some joke she had told. “Yes, we have all come a good, long way, and seen some extremely interesting things since I first laid eyes on you in your uncle’s occult bookshop.”

I laughed at the memory—not that there was really too much to laugh about, in some ways. I had accidentally blown a guy up that day; smeared him across the walls and ceiling of my uncle’s bookstore like two-hundred pounds of maple ham spread.

Still, it was funny to think how fresh I had been then. How instantly attracted I had been to the gorgeous Mazirian Induction Officer, Enwyn Emberskull… I had seen her shower and seen her body for the first time that day, and that had led to me sleeping with her for the first time on the night of the Choosing Ceremony, in my frat house.

I found my eyes drifting around the table, recalling how each female War Mage there had caught my eye, how the connection between each of us had been forged.

The petite, athletic, and fiery Janet had been the first mage I had ever met, although I had no idea of it at the time. We had chanced upon each other in the mosh pit of an Iron Maiden show. After a lot of flirting and even more bourbon, we had ended up doing the no-pants dance that night after the gig. I had awoken the next morning with the sort of hangover you could sell to the scientists at Johns Hopkins University to study and Janet had been gone. Little did I know, though, that she had left me with my first spell: Storm Bolt. I grinned, remembering how I had then seen her doing a keg-stand on my first day at the Academy.

My eyes slid to the right.

Cecilia Chillgrave, elven aristocrat, Frost Mage, hot-ass blonde, and the only cherry I had ever picked from the virginity tree. My memory took me back to going to the orc-infested temple, on the day we met the Gemstone Elements. She seemed like such a prim and proper lady then, aloof and cold. She definitely was that, but I had learned that she could get down and dirty too. Thinking about how I had taken her virginity in that frozen tower, overlooking the place that she called home all those months ago, sent a pleasant shiver down my spine.

My gaze was drawn by the glimmer of Alura, Princess of the Gemstone Elementals, sitting next to Cecilia. That same ethereal sparkle had caught my gaze when I had first clapped eyes on her at the table of the Prophet King of the Gemstone people. The friendship and mutual respect that had sprung up between us while we had been guests in her father’s house had then led to me having her by my side at the Academy. By my side… under me… on top of me… We had ended up having sex in her sorority house’s dungeon. She had been the first non-human I had ever slept with.

The combined memories of all the hot, steamy times that I had enjoyed with these women got my blood pumping. We had all fucked in myriad different places, oftentimes not just one-on-one but as part of threesomes and foursomes.

I drained my wine and looked around the table. The conversation had fallen into a lull, and the eyes of the four women were all boring into mine, almost as if they could read the thoughts surfacing in that naughty little part of my brain that had an express line to my meat and beans.

“What are you thinking about, babe?” Janet asked me.

“I was thinking,” I said slowly, looking from one female mage to the next, “that I’m ready.”

I only realized the truth of these words after I had spoken them. In speaking them, I had made my decision at the same time.

“Ready for what?” Alura asked.

“Ready for another spell,” I said. “Ready to make another spell. With you ladies. All of you. And I want it to be a goddamn masterpiece. I want it to be beautiful and lethal, just like you four smoking hot, dangerous women.”

Alura, Janet, Enwyn, and Cecilia all exchanged excited looks.

Janet, who was always the first to charge headlong into a challenge, snatched up a bottle of wine and stood up.

“Barry’s sleeping quarters are in the back, through that door,” she said, indicating a stout oak door that led to the rear of the captain’s cabin. “As a poltergeist, I think sleep is one thing that he can go without.”

I stood up, walked over to the door, and glanced back at the four stunning examples of female beauty.

“Girls, we’re not going to be doing any sleeping either,” I said with a wry grin. “Not until we’ve earned it at any rate.” I kicked the door open, ushered the girls through, and then closed it behind me. There was a wooden bar standing in the corner, and I put this across the door with a reassuring thud.

It was a pretty simple room, really, but comfortable all the same. There were a couple of seaman’s trunks against one wall, a table with a map and charts and other bits of parchment spread across it, and a fairly large bed, which I guessed was one of the perks of being the captain—no hammock.

The whorled windowpanes looked out over the moonlit sea. The watery expanse rippled out behind us like silver and midnight blue cloth, the wake of the ship drifting ever outward like discarded lace. Then, something suddenly struck the window.

“Fish!” I said, bemused.

“Floating fish,” Enwyn said to me.

“Don’t you mean flying fish?” I asked.

“Fish can’t fly,” Enwyn snorted. “No, these are floating fish. The full moon acts as a beacon to them, and they float out of the depths to drink in its rays before sinking down again when dawn breaks.”

Strangely, the soft tapping of the floating fish on the windows made the atmosphere perfectly cozy inside the cabin.

I turned back from the fishy meteorological conditions and saw that the four women were eyeing me.

“Hey,” I said, “you look like you know what happens next—don’t let me get in the way.”

They were candid, bold, and good-looking women. They were assured in their own skins. They knew how impressive, how sexy they were, and they owned that knowledge.

“You couldn’t stop us if you tried, Mr. Mauler,” Enwyn growled, her blue eyes shining like the darkest sapphires behind the lenses of her glasses. Slowly, she removed her spectacles and placed them delicately on the table holding all the maps and charts.

I watched the quartet of beautiful War Mages all start to undress. Cecilia, taking the lead before Janet could assert herself this time, came up behind Enwyn and gently reached round and unzipped the biker-style leather suit that the Fire Mage habitually wore. She pulled down the zipper, exposing Enwyn’s perfect breasts. The slightly older woman shivered as the elf ran her fingers over her nipples.

My cock stirred like an animal coming out of hibernation. I reached out and gently, but firmly, pulled Alura to me.

“You know,” Alura said in a soft voice, her strange white and gold eyes half-lidded as she willed away her ethereal clothing and left herself standing stark naked in front of me, “all this talk of piracy has got me well and truly flustered.”

“I’m feeling a little flustered myself.” I pulled the Gemstone Princess to me and kissed her deeply. Our tongues intertwined, and the naked, glittering woman folded warmly into me.

“There’s passion in the air tonight, huh?” Enwyn said, her voice coming huskily as Cecilia continued to run her fingertips over her bare chest.

Cecilia made a soft growling sound of agreement.

“I’m excited that the five of us get to enjoy this together,” Alura said, between kisses.

There was the soft, sensual sound of lips meeting as Janet moved in to suck hungrily at my mouth.

“I’m sure I’m not alone in saying that I concur, Alura,” I said, with a little difficulty as Janet began rubbing at the front of my breeches even while our lips were smushed together. “And I hope it’ll just be the first time of many.”

Enwyn moaned a little as Cecilia pinched her nipples. “I could not be any wetter even were I to jump into the sea.”

With a thought, I vanished my own clothes. The cloak that Igor had given me months before as part of my very first sponsorship deal pooled at my feet.

Chapter 9

“You’re first up, Miss Thunderstone,” I growled at Janet.

“Just as you say, Captain,” the petite brunette minx replied.

“However will we entertain ourselves, while you two are busy?” Cecilia said with mock concern, as Janet, who had stripped her breeches and shirt off but was still in her underwear, pulled me over to the map table.

“Don’t you fret about that,” Alura said, her voice as clear and pure as drops of silver in the air. “I’m sure that we’ll be able to think of something to do.”

Cecilia laughed throatily, watching past Enwyn’s dark head as Janet sat on the edge of the map table and pulled me to her by the effective method of grabbing me by the cock.

“That’s right,” the Storm Mage said as I opened up her legs, and she knocked one foot against the wall that was closest to us. “Get inside of me, please, but slow. Fuck me slow and deep, Justin. Slow and deep.”

“Would you like me to match the rhythm of the ship?” I quipped. “Rock and roll with the swell.”

I pulled Janet’s pink underwear to the side, revealing her tight box with its little strip of shaved pubic hair. She was wet as hell. I could see that at a glance.

“Now, darlings,” I heard Cecilia say to Enwyn and Alura from behind me. “Let’s warm up a little before the main event.”

“Permission to come aboard,” I said with a cheeky grin, rubbing the tip of my cock up and down Janet’s slit and coating it in her wetness.

Janet’s deep dark eyes glittered naughtily as she watched my cock pressing at the opening of her pussy. She pulled her underwear further to the side so that I had an unimpeded view of her sex.

“You can come wherever you damn well please,” she said.

She gasped suddenly as I slipped my prick slowly into her. At the same time, I began rubbing gently at her clit, working my fingers over the lips and super sensitive nub of her box while I slowly thrust away at her.

“Slow and deep,” Janet said between moans. “That’s it. That’s the fucking spot right there, Justin.”

I looked over at the other three women and found Enwyn, standing naked and wonderful in front of on my right, watching Janet and I fuck and smiling at me coyly.

Cecilia and Alura were canoodling by the bed, kissing and stroking and caressing one another in a most sensuous and erotic way.

“Hold on,” Cecilia said, in a mock outraged voice after Janet and I had been going at it for about ten minutes, “I feel like, as equal members of the crew, we ladies should all get an equal share in your bounty…”

“Me too,” said Alura, joining in and flashing Janet and me a dazzling smile. “I want some of your treasure, Justin Mauler…”

“As do I,” Enwyn purred as she stepped right out of her biker-style fighting leathers. “Perhaps I might stow your plunder in my booty...”

Well, I was a people-pleaser, what could I say. I was also a sucker for a woman who could come up with a nautical pun and keep a straight face at a moment like that.

Enwyn, Alura, and Cecilia, holding hands and running their fingers over one another’s bodies, proceeded over to the bed. The moon shone through the windows that lined the entire back wall and lit the scene in a romantic silver light.

Alura, taking it upon herself to be the master of ceremonies, positioned Enwyn in the middle of the trio as they lined up along the side of Barry’s wood-framed bed. She took the spot closest to me, while Cecilia was on the right.

Even as I fucked Janet, slow and deep, pressing into her as far as I could go before slowly drawing out of her again, I could not help but marvel at the beauty of the three other women kneeling in the pool of moonlight.

The whole tableau was made only slightly funny by the occasional floating fish that, every now and again, smacked into the windows.

Then, Alura said, in her most commanding and regal voice, “Ladies, roll out your armaments, will you? Let’s show our captain here how tasty a broadside he has under his command.”

Alura took her place on Enwyn’s left. Enwyn, looking like the hottest piece of milf ass that I had ever seen, applied gentle pressure to the backs of the other two women so that they were forced over onto all-fours on the bed, their asses pointing toward me. Then she pulled down the panties that she had kept on and flicked the skimpy underwear that she had been wearing at me. They hit me in the chest and dropped to the floor.

I went to move over to the bed, to share the love with the other three women, but Janet grabbed my asscheeks and held me to her.

“Wait,” she whispered. “I’m close. Keep going.”

The deep, bottomless pools of her brown eyes seemed to crackle and flash with an inner lightning then; bright and libidinous and filled with Storm Magic. The hairs on my arms stood up, like they were statically charged.

“Yes… yes… yes… yes,” Janet said, her stomach muscles working and her voice getting higher as I continued to plunge slowly and steadily into her. “That’s it!”

I could have come with her myself, right there, but I refrained with an effort. There were three more girls to pleasure yet, and I was not quite sure about how I wanted to finish this sensuous evening off.

Trickling branches of static electricity flowed out from Janet’s sex as she came. She did not cry out, but she went rigid and shuddered, her eyes flashing once more before she closed them and relaxed.

She let loose an animal groan of satisfaction as I pulled out of her. Her legs drooped slowly off the side of the desk and a little stream of girl cum dribbled out of her gaping hole and went all over Barry’s maps.

“That,” the Storm Mage said, “was very, very nice.”

I swallowed. A thought had just occurred to me. It was not exactly what you would call a totally annoying thought, but it had begun to niggle me at the back of my head as soon as we had left the table and I had only just now recognized it for what it was. The cheeky little shit.

“It’s just dawned on me that I’m not going to be able to finish off in just one of you, right?” I said, turning to face the line-up of incredible backsides that were pointing in my direction.

“What’re you on about, Justin, darling?” Cecilia said. Her small hand was between her toned thighs, and she was rubbing delicately at her pussy, circling her clit with a careful, teasing forefinger.

“I mean, without being overly crude, I’m not going to be able to blow my load in just one of you, at the end of this lovely little session,” I said. “If I want to create a spell that encapsulates the raw power and eye-watering majesty of you babes, then I think I need to somehow finish with all of you, not just one of you, you know?”

Cecilia pouted prettily at me, while Alura busied herself by exchanging a tender, lingering, tongue-filled kiss with Enwyn.

“I think that you just answered your own question before, inadvertently” Enwyn said, pulling away from Alura.

“I did?” I asked.

“When you said, ‘Permission to come aboard’ to Janet,” the Fire Mage elaborated. “I think that is the answer. Come on board all of us. Come on us. Blowing your load in our pussies isn’t the only way to make the magic work. I’m almost certain of it. And, should it not work, you could always try again, no?”

“Gods be damned,” Janet said, from where she lay on the table, running her fingers down her thighs, “now this is one of those times when we’re faced with a problem that is not so much a problem, huh?”

We all laughed at that observation. I took a step toward the bed where the Fire Mage, Gemstone Elemental, and Frost Mage were all awaiting my attention.

“Very true,” Cecilia said, from between gritted teeth. The hand massaging her sex was getting her well and truly worked up. “Let’s just cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“Or when we come on it, as the case may be,” I said, staring down at the three bared asses and their accompanying pussies that were lined up in front of me. Alura giggled excitedly, wiggling her crystal backside invitingly.

“I’m sure that all of us are keen on getting started for the bridge in question,” the Gemstone Princess said teasingly in her controlled and diplomatic voice.

“I liked what you did with Janet, Justin,” Enwyn crooned at me, spreading her asscheeks with her hands while keeping her face off the mattress and displaying a core strength that any gym-junkie would have been readily able to appreciate. “I’d like some of that action, please. I know that we’re not at the Academy right now, but I’ll have you remember that, technically, I am senior to you, and you should do as I wish.”

That vaguely secretarial tone alone almost had me plunging cock first into the Mazirian Academy’s Induction Officer before I could stop myself.

I stepped forward, grasped Enwyn by her hips, and, like a good and eager to please student, slowly did as I was fucking told.

Well, wax my legs, slap an apron on me, and call me Shirley, but it was hard to stop myself from fucking those women until I passed the point of no return. It was very, very hard to make sure all the women got their rocks off before I took care of myself. From the moment that I grabbed Enwyn by the ass and slid my cock deep inside her, thrusting with long, even strokes into her warm slickness, it was one of the greatest trials that my libido and I had ever faced together.

As I slapped Cecilia and Alura playfully on their rumps while they masturbated on either side of me, a conversation that I had randomly overheard in a deli between two girls came back to me in an unexpected flash. I guess it had stuck with me, and had come back to me just at that exact moment, because it was so apt.

The two ladies had been waiting for their sandwiches. One of them had been arguing with the other about how true satisfaction lay between the self-imposed delay of wanting a thing—whether it be a new pair of shoes, a cigarette, or a feeling of some kind—and actually getting that thing. She said it was that space between breaths, between the wanting and getting, that was the most enjoyable part.

I tried to channel that control now.

I thrust forward and started pounding Enwyn’s open, pink pussy with deeper and deeper strokes. The Fire Mage gasped and arched her back, and a wave of ghostly flames flickered across the skin of her ass and back like the flames of a dying fire that had just been fanned.

Occasionally, I would pull out and run my cock from Enwyn’s clit all the way up her glistening slit. I cast an eye over toward the women on either side of her and saw Alura watching me avidly. Her mouth was slightly open as one hand played with her large breasts, pinching hard at one glittering diamond nipple.

I slid my fingers into the warm, velvety confines of Alura’s and Cecilia’s pussies after a little while, when I could feel that it was taking all their self-discipline to keep from doing it themselves. Alura let out a long sigh of contentment, and she contracted around my fingers.

Meanwhile, my prick was still stabbing deep into Enwyn’s warm, moist center, slow and steady, making her wetter and wetter as I occasionally spat onto my hand and mixed spit with her own girl juices. I could feel her pushing her ass up to meet my dick, could hear her breathing becoming more ragged.

“Am I right in thinking that you might very soon be walking the plank into a sea of ecstasy?” I asked her, pulling out of her momentarily and slapping my glistening cock onto first her left and then her right buttcheek.

“Yes,” Enwyn gasped, “but don’t you fucking dare stop now, Creation Mage. Don’t you dare stop now. Otherwise, I’ll have you thrown in the brig and left at the mercy of every other woman on board to use you as they will.”

“That doesn’t sound too awful,” I said, running a line of kisses up her spine and making her groan. I slid my rod back into her tight hole and picked up the pace a fraction, finger fucking the two chicks on either side of me with renewed vigor, while I tried to stick my cock as far into Enwyn as I could.

My cock was throbbing with the need to slide it into one of the other women—into the two that my cock had not penetrated just yet. I was enjoying myself immensely with Enwyn, but the thought of triple-dipping while Janet looked on… That was a thought that I could get on board with.

I pulled out of Enwyn, took a step to the side and then plunged my rod into Alura. She gasped at the unexpected entry and cried out with delight. I fucked her for a little while, then pulled out and did the same to Cecilia at the other end of the line.

The aristocratic elf, part of one of the most powerful and well-respected families in Avalonia, groaned like a whore as I thrust in and out, in and out, in and out of her. I didn’t start going fucking her wildly, as I longed to do, but eked out the pleasure one thrust at a time.

I spent the next little while going from one woman to the other. After a minute or so, Janet took it upon herself to put herself in charge. She came to stand next to me and would watch as I slowly thrust away at whoever I happened to be standing behind at the time. When she deemed the time ripe, she would pull my cock out and guide it toward the box that she deemed hungriest and in most need of it.

It was not long before I had Alura, Cecilia, and Enwyn all on the point of climaxing.

Janet took my cock out of Alura and stroked it while I reached down and put a hand out to Alura and Cecila’s quivering pussies. My chest was rising and falling, and my dick was twitching in Janet’s hand. I nodded at Enwyn’s ass, and Janet positioned my cock an inch from her lovehole.

When I had the trio them in the palm of my hand—both palms, I suppose—I stuck two of my fingers deep into Alura’s and Cecilia’s soaking wet pink tacos and made come-hither motions while, at the same time, slipping my thumbs into their uber tight assholes.

I pressed my iron-hard dick up to the hilt into Enwyn’s aroused and waiting opening and began moving it in and out as quickly as I could, being careful to squash my nuts hard up against her clit with every stroke.

The effect was immediate. Cecilia’s back arched, and she let out a long breathy wail of gratification, tossing her blonde head from side to side. The quite aptly named hoar frost patterns, which I had seen coalesce over her skin when we had fucked before, bloomed across her back.

The Gemstone Princess, Alura, clenched up and then writhed as she came, her crystalline body flushing through a scintillating kaleidoscope of colors as she orgasmed. Her face was pressed into the blankets so her cries of delight were muffled, but from the way that her legs thrashed and her toes curled, though, I figured she was enjoying an absolute humdinger of a big O.

Enwyn came, and girl juice suddenly drenched my prick and ran over my pelvis and down my thighs. The dark-haired beauty tried to move her sex away from my merciless cock, but I followed her, continuing to press into her while I squeezed her asscheeks.

The Fire Mage let out a couple of howls of lust-filled satisfaction, then collapsed onto the bed with me lying half on top of her, her eyes closed, her dark hair spread across her face and stuck to her lips, but her mouth was open in a smile of pure contentment.

Janet smacked Alura’s ass and jiggled it. There was a vaguely hungry look on the face of the daughter of Idman Thunderstone. She had had time to get her breath back now, and she looked like she wanted to see this thing all the way through.

Not giving the gratified trio of women in front of me very long to rest on their laurels, Janet smacked Enwyn on the ass and said, “You know the thing about females right, ladies? We’re always, always having to set an example to the males of the species. Let’s show Captain Mauler here just what good fucking first mates we can be, hm?”

“As you seem to be the current captain of this vessel, Justin, darling,” Cecilia grunted breathlessly from where she lay on the bed, “what would you like us to do for you?”

In answer, I pulled Cecilia up and took her place on the bed. Then, I maneuvered the slightly dazed Alura so she was seated on my cock. The Gemstone Elemental uttered a groan of pleasure as she straddled my dick, while I grabbed her giant breasts in my hands. Her face was contorted with pleasure, sweat running down her perfect crystalline form, as I pumped her continuously.

“Mmmm, you have been a strong and gentle man today, Justin Mauler,” she purred after some time, sliding off me and kissing me hard on the lips. “I’m impressed. It was… romantic.”

Alura kissed me hungrily again as Janet slithered nimbly into my lap, responding to my beckoning finger.

As Enwyn and Cecilia enfolded Alura in their joint embrace, Janet stuck her tongue into my mouth and rubbed my cock, which was sticky with the Gemstone Princess’s juices.

“You want to fuck?” I asked, lust shining in my eyes as I looked over the athletic, naked form of the woman I had first fucked, covered in the wholesome, well-earned sweat of an Iron Maiden mosh pit.

“Do I ever,” she said, her dark brown eyes shining and her chest rising and falling rapidly with anticipation.

The bed was a little small for five people, now that we were all on it, and I was forced to move out of the way, my raging boner sticking out about a foot as Janet squirmed around on the bed to get comfortable. In the process, the Storm Mage gave me an eyeful of her stunning, lithe athlete’s physique.

Janet turned around so that her glorious bubble butt was pointing in my direction. Then she got ever-so-slowly onto all fours and spread her legs wide for me. If she had yawned, I would have been able to see all the way through her and to the moon-washed horizon of the sea beyond, like some pornographic telescope.

I grasped her hips and rubbed the tip of my cock up and down her wet slit. Then, as Janet moaned in expectancy, I thrust hard into her so that my pelvis smacked onto her ass with a meaty thud.

The time for nice and slow was over, to my mind. Now, it was time for the money-shot and to see if I was going to be the recipient of the kind of spell that I had been after.

Janet was jerked forward and cried out with pleasure through gritted teeth. Her hands clutched at the blankets, her knuckles turning white.

She growled. “That’s it! Create those spells, Creation Mage. Use us as your fucking canvas!”

I started banging Janet hard from behind. She had that flawless, bubble butt stuck up in the air and was giving out caveman grunts and groans of delight with every push. It was part of the Storm Mage’s charm; that she was usually this little enthusiastic deviant. If anyone could be guaranteed to talk and fuck me over the edge in good time, it was Janet.

We were going at it so vigorously that Enwyn, Alura, and Cecilia stopped with their mutual pleasuring so that they could watch us. Then, almost as a sexy afterthought, Enwyn crawled in front of Janet, lay on her back, and opened her legs right in front of the other woman’s face.

Janet clapped her hands to the Fire Mage’s creamy thighs and pulled them further apart to reveal the glistening pink slit between them. Enwyn’s sex gaped, and she gave a little moan of rapture as Janet Thunderstone commenced to stick her tongue into it.

Taking her lead from Enwyn, Cecilia swung her leg dexterously over the older woman’s head and squatted on her face. Enwyn started feasting on the meal between the lean elf’s thighs.

As we were short on space, Alura had to content herself by standing beside me and running her hands up and down my thighs, pecs and stomach.

As Janet’s moans and cries got louder, Cecilia began to grind her pelvis harder into Enwyn’s face. The blonde’s face was flushed, her long hair spread over her countenance in utter disarray. Enwyn too was obviously getting closer to the big O once more. Her fingers were entwined through Janet’s brown hair, and she was groaning into Cecilia’s crotch.

I had to hand it to whoever had designed the female ability for multiple orgasms—it was a neat trick.

I picked up my rhythm even more, jackhammering away at Janet, but making a point of pulling her ass toward me so that I could go ever deeper.

“Come on, Justin!” Janet growled. “Come on! Give us those spells, Creation Mage! Put your money where your mouth is!”

My breathing became ragged as I drew to the brink of orgasm, to the limits of my self-control, my thrusts getting wilder. I looked down at Janet just as her back arched and her whole body locked up into the throes of ecstasy.

Enwyn too, almost immediately, cried out as she climaxed once more, at the same time as Janet.

A second later, Cecilia threw back her head, her golden hair fanning out around her head, bleached of color in the light of the moon that was streaming in through the window. She gave a croaking cry and shuddered, grabbing at her small breasts as she came.

The women went limp and collapsed as one. Totally spent.

But not for long.

“Up,” I said, in a horse whisper. “Quick come here.”

I stepped back, and the four women, as if anticipating my very thoughts knelt in a semicircle around me. All of us were sweaty and disheveled and exhausted, but there was one thing that needed to be done to set the seal on this five-way union of ours and make sure that everyone came out on top.

With all that we had just done, it was of no surprise that it only took a couple of tugs for me to pop my cork.

The girls, each of them with their tits pushed up toward me, were watching me eagerly. With a grateful sigh, I blew my load over the assembled breasts of the quartet kneeling reverentially before me. I was careful to make sure that each chick got at least one decent spurt of my seed over their breasts.

Afterward, I collapsed, jelly-legged onto the bed and looked at the jizz-covered women in front of me.

“Check... check my spellbook,” I managed to gasp, pointing at the magical transmogrifying cloak that was lying nearby. My spellbook was sitting a few paces away, where it had fallen from the pocket of my breeches when I dissolved my clothes.

Janet, who looked totally unfazed by the fact that she had just been used as human Kleenex, reached down and rifled through the little book.

She stuck her finger to a page and tossed the book to me. I caught it and looked down, still trying to catch my breath.

METEOR SHOWER (Hybrid Magic): Conjures a meteor shower to devastating effect. A truly potent and rare spell, marrying Storm, Frost, Fire, and Earth Magics.

I grinned and snapped the book shut.

That was exactly the sort of thing that I had been after.

“How did everyone else go?” I asked, when I had read the spell aloud to the four women.

Cecilia was wiping my seed off her with a cloth she had found in one of the trunks while pouring over her own spellbook.

“Frozen Armor: Summons a frost-based armor set around the wearer.” She looked up at me and winked. “I could have used that when you came, darling.”

I snorted.

“Lightning Orb,” Janet said, wrenching the cork out of the bottle of wine that she had brought into the room with her. “An orb of lightning that follows the caster and zaps nearby enemies. Nice. A defensive and offensive spell.”

“What did you get, Alura?” I asked the Gemstone Elemental.

“An upgraded form of the Gemstone Pup summoning spell,” Alura replied, looking down at her spellbook and running a hand along the text. “Gemstone Hound it’s called. I wonder if it is anything like as powerful as your Lightning Skink.”

“I don’t think we’ll have long to wait to test it,” I said.

“And I got Conflagration,” Enwyn said, snapping her grimoire closed. “It says that it’s a roaring inferno that reduces everything in its path to ash.”

“One that Damien will like the sound of, I bet,” I said.

We passed the bottle of wine around while we cleaned up and got dressed. Although we were all pretty tired, I thought that a bit of fresh air might do us good before we hit the hay.

“Come outside with me,” I told the women now that they’d cleaned themselves up. “I want to see something, and I want you ladies there too.”

We trooped back outside, took up a spot at the bow of the ship, laying down in a nest of ropes and snuggling together.

The dude on the mandolin was still doing his thing, his fingers plucking notes out of the instrument and sending them swirling around the masts to dance along the shrouds and out to sea. The lamps were still hanging from the rigging. Everyone—pirate and rebel alike—were full of beer and food. There was an unmistakable atmosphere and sense of goodwill to all men, which only came after a good meal.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s see what we’ve got here.”

I conjured the staff that I was beginning to think of as the staff of the Twin Spirits, pointed it up at the stars, reached deep into my mana reserves, and cast my new Meteor Shower spell.

I aimed it high, high into the heavens, as far as I could project my mana power.

The spell, up on the edge of the firmament, erupted into life. It was like the greatest firework display that there ever was. The giant lumps of burning crystal with their icy hearts and wreathed in lightning, touched the upper atmosphere and sparked and exploded into all sorts of colors and weird and wonderful shapes.

There was, because there always is, a chorus of ‘Oooohs!’ and Aaaahs!’ from everyone who was still on deck.

Renegades and pirates stopped what they were doing. Even Captain Nutlee, who was involved in an intense game of dice on the other side of the mast let out an appreciative sigh. “Blow me down, can’t say I’ve seen much better things than that there display.”

Barry, who had been dicing with her, replied, “Aye, it’s seeing things like that there that make me stop dwelling on all the misery of this world, and start attending to the beauty that still remains.”

To my astonishment, I heard Captain Nutlee sniff. For a moment, I thought she’d been moved to tears. Then I heard her spit and say, “Argh, stop with that fucking bilge and lay down your bet, Chillgrave.”

Over near one of the railings, I heard one of the pirates from Captain Nutlee’s ship say, “Well, that’s the last bit of natural beauty we’re going to see.”

“What do you mean?” asked a rebel who was standing nearby.

The pirate laughed, but there was very little humor in it. “Ye’ll see well enough when we get to journey’s end, matey. Cupido Island might very well be just about the least beautiful thing in the entire multiverse.”

So, there was shit to come, sure. For now, though, my women and I would simply concentrate at the beauty taking place above our heads.

Chapter 10

It turned out that Cupido Island, the official lair of the Pirate Queen, was not just a single island.

A single island would have made things too simple, I realized, when I clapped my eyes on the archipelago that loomed up from the hazy blue horizon the next morning. One island meant that there was only a single place on which the Pirate Queen’s blinging gold castle could be situated. It meant that we might have been able to do a little clandestine circling from afar and come up with the best route to get in and out of the joint.

But, no.

This was an archipelago, by the looks of it—a group of islands all clustered around one another. This was not going to be a simple assassination job, not just a bit of a smash and grab. There was, I could tell, going to be more to this mission than appeared on the surface.

“Par for the Avalonian course,” I muttered to myself.

I cast an eye over our port side, to where Chopsticks Nutlee’s ship was cruising alongside our schooner. The gnoll captain was standing at the helm with her helmsman. The vessels were close enough for me to clearly make out the greedy look on her flabby face and the way that her piggy eyes would flash from the looming shape of Cupido Island on the horizon to Barry standing at the wheel behind me.

I was going to have to keep my eye on that woman. I trusted her just about as far as I could throw her and, judging by the Eric Cartman physique she was sporting, that wouldn’t be fucking far at all.

I closed my eyes, trying to clear my head of all those whirling worries that were going to be future Justin’s problems, and endeavored to enjoy the feeling of the early morning sunlight on my face.

The wind was blowing gently, bringing with it the smell of spice and salt—not to mention just a smidgen of acrid bile from a patch of hastily cleared vomit over by the starboard railing. After the meteor shower I had put on the previous evening, spirits at the coming adventure had risen, and there had been a deal of, what I believe pirates called, debauchery. Drinking, merry-making, and random bouts of public fucking had taken place amongst the crew. Definitely more Pirates II: Stagnetti’s Revenge than Hook.

“Yargh, but there is a fellow that has the sinkissed look about him,” came a voice came from over my right shoulder.

I hadn’t heard anyone approach. Then again, that was no real surprise. Captain Chillgrave might have had more solidity to him than I had ever seen, but he was still a denizen of the Spectral Realm. The motherfucker had proved yesterday that he still had the ability to float when he wanted to.

“Sinkissed?” I asked, not opening my eyes, the more to enjoy the warm sun that was bathing my countenance. “Don’t you mean sunkissed, Barry?”

Barry chuckled to himself. With my eyes closed, I could hear the weariness in his voice now too. The pirate captain did a good job of hiding it, but for someone who was used to his bouncing, innuendo-laden poltergeist form, it was apparent that the ghostly dude was running on fumes.

“Nay, lad, sinkissed is what I said and sinkissed is what I mean,” he said. “Ye’ve the look on your mug of a man who has been up to no good the previous evening. Making the beast with two backs—or, perhaps, the beast with many backs, eh?”

I could hear that old familiar leer in his voice, and I couldn’t help but grin.

“You should have been a fucking detective, Barry,” I said, opening my eyes and turning to face the eldritch cove. “You would have made a good Sherlock Holmes.”

Barry made a face. “I don’t know who this Sherlock Holmes is, sir, but the very notion of acting in any sort of lawful capacity makes my skin crawl. Besides,” he added, “it don’t take half a working brain to be able to fit the pieces together. I went down to my cabin, after that fine light show that you put on last night.  It looked like the aftermath of the sort of orgy that old Barry himself used to enjoy back in his glory days.”

I laughed at that and clapped Barry on his boney shoulder. To my surprise, I found that I could.

“Not only that,” Captain Chillgrave continued, his one good eye twinkling at me, “but Miss Thunderstone and dear Miss Emberskull are walking around with sex rats on the backs of their heads.”

“Sex rats?” I asked.

“Argh, it’s what me and my old crew used to call that matted up bit o’ hair on the back of a lass’s head after a night of vigorously making butter with one’s tail.”

I laughed again and pointed out at the growing smudges on the horizon. “Won’t be long now until those shriveled old balls of yours are floating in Death Energy and you can have your turn at making all the sex rats that you can.”

Barry’s chest swelled as he took a deep breath of sea air and sighed it out happily.

“Aye, sir,” he said. “That sounds mighty fine indeed.”

“I assume that you’ll be able to, you know, get it on and everything, once you’re dosed up with that Death Energy, right? I mean, even though we’re in the Spectral Realm and you and your kind are, technically, specters, you all look pretty solid. You feel solid. I was thinking about that last night. Now that we’re here in this place, you must be able to act, basically, like mortals do back on Avalonia, right?”

Barry gave me a look that someone might give a dog that has rolled over and played dead the first time it’s been asked: surprised and impressed.

“Mighty fine deductive technique, sir,” he said approvingly. “And ye are quite right. Well, almost completely right.”

“How almost completely right?” I asked.

Barry made a throaty, crackling sound that I recognized as a chuckle.

“Because we can enjoy things like mortals do back on Avalonia, sir,” he said, “only more so.”

“Want to explain that one to me?”

Barry shrugged and nodded out toward Cupido Island. “I think you’re goin’ to see the evidence of what I’m talking about soon enough,” he said. “And trust me when I tell you that seeing it will give you a much better idea of what life, or the afterlife, in the Spectral Realm is really like, sir.”

“Is it like Purgatory, this place?”

“Purga-what-do-ye-call-it, sir?” Barry asked.

It had been quite some time since I had done that, since I had inadvertently assumed that someone from the magical world into which I had been transported would know something about Earth. Of course, Barry wouldn’t have a clue what Purgatory was. So far as I could tell, there was no religion in Avalonia or any of the parallel realms that had a doctrine like it. I guessed that was because they had enough to fight over as it was.

“It’s like the sort of waiting room for the dead,” I said. “Like, where you go when you weren’t a terrible person in life, but you also weren’t a great person either.”

Barry considered this as the sharp prow of our schooner cut neatly through the gentle swell that rocked the vessel under our feet.

“I think, sir, that that is a little beyond my pay-grade, so to speak,” the poltergeist said to me after a few seconds of cogitation. “It’s more than I can answer to. All I know is that everyone in the Spectral Realm is a spirit with unfinished business. I suppose, in a way, it does sound a little like this Purga-thingamajig place that you speak of. As far as any can tell, it’s for them spirits who decide, in the moment of their passing, that they have a few more things that they need to take care of before they go on.”

“Go on where?” I asked.

“Ah, that’s the bloody one-million doubloon question, ain’t it, sir?” Barry said.

Before we could head further down this theological road, Janet Thunderstone came marching up the deck and stood between us. She gave me a kiss on the cheek as a morning greeting and shot Barry a wink that made the piratical old sea dog blush like a maiden.

“Morning, gents,” she said.

I made a show of looking around us, as did Barry.

“Did you see any gentleman this morning, Barry?” I asked.

Barry took off his enormous hat and ran a hand through his lank black hair. “Gentlemen? They’d be a fucking rare breed on this tub, sir.”

Janet punched Barry gently on the shoulder.

“Fine,” she said, switching to the most over-the-top pirate voice I had ever heard. “Avast there, ye black-hearted and barnacle-encrusted scallywags!”

Barry’s eyebrows rose, and he gave an appreciative chuckle. “And here’s me thinkin’ that my own ancestor, Cecilia, will be the first to turn pirate! You’re a natural, Miss Thunderstone.”

Janet smiled at the old rascally poltergeist. Then, as she looked out at the shape of Cupido Island, the pleased look on her gorgeous face faded a little.

“Knowing you two,” she said, her eyes narrowing, “you’ve probably been chatting about everything but what we should do when we land, all while we draw inexorably closer to the seat of the Pirate Queen’s power.”

“Well…” I said. “I’d say we were talking about important things…”

Barry muttered something under his breath. I thought I caught the word ‘sex rat’, but Janet seemed to miss it.

“I guess as the only female present and, therefore, the only person in the vicinity with anything even resembling common-sense,” Janet said, “I’ll be the one to ask the question that should be on the tip of both of your—”

“Penises?” Barry hazarded.

“—tongues,” Janet finished.

Barry cleared his throat and whistled a few tuneless bars. “That’s what I meant,” he said.

“What is the pertinent question to which you allude, oh wise woman?” I asked the athletic brunette at my side.

“Who the fuck was the Pirate Queen when she was alive?” Janet asked. “The more that we know about this chick, the easier it’ll be to find a weakness in her armor.”

“You think that just by knowing a little of her backstory we might be able to pinpoint a potential Achilles’ heel?” I asked.

Janet shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Who in the name of a narwhal's nutsack is Achilles?” Barry asked.

“Doesn’t matter,” Janet and I said in unison.

Barry leaned back and cracked his spine with a sound like a packet of potato chips being stepped on.

“I can tell ye that easy enough,” he said to Janet, gazing as wistfully out at the growing shape of the Pirate Queen’s dominion as a man with only one eye can. “Her name is Isobel Galeflint.”

A gasp from behind us alerted the three of us to the fact that Enwyn had joined us. I noticed, from my mental peripheral, that the sex rat that Barry had apparently seen adorning the back of her head had been combed out, as had Janet’s.

“Isobel Galeflint!” the Fire Mage said, coming to prop her elbows on the bow rail and lean back so that the sun fell on her upturned face. “Surely not the same Isobel Galeflint that was sister of …”

“Queen Galeflint, aye,” Barry said. “Aye, that be the woman who took up the mantle of Pirate Queen when she was shuffled none too gently off the mortal plane.”

“Isobel Galeflint was actually once the sister of a monarch of the Avalonian Kingdom?” I asked in surprise.

“Aye, that she was Master Mauler, that she was,” Barry said. A smile flashed with a falcon’s speed across his scarred and withered face. “She was a damned bloodthirsty wench at that.”

“I notice something that might very well be approval in your voice, Captain Chillgrave,” Enwyn said with mock sternness.

Barry held out his skinny wrists in the manner of one expecting to be taken in by the law.

“I’m a damned pirate, ain’t I?” he said. “Guilty as fuckin’ charged. I’ll not deny that the way that flint-hearted bitch conducted herself made my pecker look like the perfect gentleman.”

“What the hell does that mean?” I asked the pirate captain.

“Yargh, just that every time that fine filly entered my presence, my todger used to get up so that she had somewhere to sit down,” Barry said.

The two girls groaned.

“Let’s get back on track here,” Janet said. “This woman, this Isobel Galeflint, she was the sister of some old Queen of Avalonia?”

“That’s right,” Enwyn said. “Her sister, Alantra Galeflint, must have been the Queen four—no five before Queen Hagatha.”

“Aye, that’d be about right by my reckoning,” Barry said.

“And what?” I asked. “She became the Pirate Queen by…?”

“Well, I was smuggling a lot of sizzle-root at the time,” Barry said, “so I wasn’t in Avalonia for much of the time that all the drama between the two sisters was taking place, you know.”

“Do I want to know what sizzle-root is?” I asked.

Enwyn waved a hand in a way that told me it was not relevant to the issue. “Best to ask Igor. I’m sure he’d be able to give you an answer. Probably a sample of the stuff too.”

“Ah,” I said. “It’s that sort of herb, is it?”

“From what I gathered, though, when we pulled into port to unload the bales of sizzle-root,” Barry went on, “is that old Isobel had tried to do a bit of a number on her older sister.”

“I’d hardly call regicide, ‘a bit of a number’,” Enwyn said.

“Fair enough,” Barry conceded, “though I’m sure Isobel would argue that she was committing tyrannicide rather than regicide.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s the line that most usurpers take, isn’t it?” Enwyn said.

“Good point,” Barry replied. “Anyway, she was a bloodthirsty woman was Isobel, back in them days, though to my mind she’s still about as vicious as a wolverine wearing a pair of barbed-wire underpants. Like Miss Emberskull said, she ended up attempting to assassinate her sister, the Queen.”

“And she got busted and given the old beheading treatment or something, did she?” I said, taking a guess.

“No,” Enwyn said. “In fact, Queen Alantra, being her big sister and all, showed Isobel mercy. She banished her little sister from the Avalonian Kingdom rather than put her to death.”

“That was nice of her,” I said.

“It was a bloody whopper of a mistake is what it was,” Barry said mildly.

“Why’s that?” I asked. “Isobel didn’t see it for the gift that it was?”

“You could say that,” said Janet sardonically. “I remember my dad telling me this story when I was a little girl.”

“Oh, I imagine that anything that Idman Thunderstone deemed as appropriate bedtime material probably didn’t end well,” I said.

“It ended kind of well for Isobel, at least for a while,” Janet said. “Isobel collected pirates, vagabonds, and general evildoers from across the realms while she was in exile. Then, when she’d rounded up every hardass with a grudge against the crown, she attacked Manafell, took on her sister, and ended up killing her.”

“That just goes to show where mercy gets you,” Barry said, shaking his grizzled head.

“She killed her sister?” I asked.

“That’s right,” said Enwyn. “Twisted her apart like a fresh pretzel if the records of the time are to be believed.”

“Then she took the throne?” I asked.

“Duh,” Janet said.

“Eventually, though, thanks to a band of you—guessed it—Creation Mages, the Arcane Council was able to take her out,” Enwyn said. “It was a grizzly demise for Isobel Galeflint. More so, even, than her poor merciful sister.”

“That explains how she became one of the most powerful people in the Spectral Realm, then,” I said. “I guess with the sort of power-hungry, get-up-and-go attitude that saw her murder her own sister, it was only a matter of time before she was ruler of something.”

Enwyn nodded and polished her glasses with her cuff.

“And now she’s being just as much of a pain in the rear-end for the Spectral Realm,” Barry said. “If what that sluggard, Chopsticks Nutlee, is to be believed. And if anyone can tell us where the Stronghold of the Twin Spirits is located, it’ll be Queen Isobel Galeflint.”

I gave him a dubious look. “You think she’ll know where it is?”

Barry growled. “Captains like Isobel, they know all the waters, all the lands that surround them. It’s what gives ‘em an edge. I should know. I was just like her once, only worse. She’ll know where it is. It’s just going to be a case of getting the information out of her. If we can’t buy it or barter it out of her, then we’ll just have to slay her. With enough Death Energy, I’ll get back not just my old powers, but all my memories too. I hope.”

We sailed on in silence, each of us lost in our own thoughts of what might be to come.

As the island archipelago known as Cupido Island drew nearer, I squinted against the glare of the sun on the ocean.

“Is it just my imagination,” I said, “or are some of those islands…”

“Floating,” said Janet, who was leaning forward and shading her eyes with her hand.

“Oh aye,” Barry said quite conversationally, as if you saw millions of tons of geological formations floating every day, “they don’t call ‘em the Buoyant Isles for nothing.”

“I thought you said it was called Cupido Island?” I said, struggling to keep my bottom jaw from sagging all the way to the waxed deck of the schooner.

“Aye, well, technically, it is the main island of the Buoyant Isles that is called Cupido Island,” Captain Chillgrave, famed pirate and geography teacher extraordinaire, informed us. “Only, folk mainly come here now to pay homage to the Pirate Queen, who lives on Cupido Island, and so the whole archipelago just became Cupido Island, if you follow my drift, sir.”

I couldn’t find the energy to reply. All my brain power was spent on the sight that was gradually coming into sharper and sharper focus in front of me. The sight of quite a few, but not all, of the islands actually floating in mid-air.

Barry steered us with great care toward the two large rocks that stood like sentries just out from the Cupido Island main. They were covered in white and pale blue bird shit. Even from about half a mile across the water, I could hear the yammer and shriek of seabirds yelling and cursing at one another.

Barry was at the prow of our schooner, leaning over the rail, almost far enough to fall in. He had his right hand extended and was moving it through the air, this way and that, in the same way that he would have been steering the ship had he been standing at the wheel. The schooner responded to every little motion of his hand, adjusting course in minute increments as we neared the Pirate Queen’s lair.

“What are you looking for, Barry?” I asked the poltergeist as we passed under the shadow of one of the sentinel-like rocks.

Barry did not answer but nodded down to his left.

I peered where he had indicated and saw something floating about six feet under the surface of the water.

“What the fuck is that?” I asked.

Barry, still not taking his eyes from the sea in front of him, said, “That, sir, would be a Tempest Mine.”

“Tempest Mine,” I repeated slowly. “Tempest Mine, as in a mine that, should we be silly enough to run over it in this very brittle, very combustible wooden ship, explode in a burst of Storm and Fire Magic?”

Barry grinned. “And here was me thinking that they didn’t teach you anything at the Academy except how to get laid and drink your weight in mixed spirits,” he said. “Well, blow me down but wonders never cease, do they, sir?”

I was half-tempted to point out that drinking your weight in mixed spirits and getting laid was practically the electives of every single person who attended any tertiary education anywhere in the multiverse, but I was too distracted by the large, ghostly green balls of submerged death that were bobbing merrily along the water.

Barry, correctly interpreting my silence as an uneasy one, said soothingly, “Oh, now don’t you worry, skipper! Old Barry was sailing these waters long before you was a glint in your father’s eye. He knows this port and the shoals all about Cupido Island like the ruddy back of his hand, so he does.”

“Barry,” I said, “people always use that expression, ‘I know this or that like the fucking back of my hand’, but tell me this: were you aware that you have a smear of shit on the back of yours?”

Barry’s eye twitched, but he dared not look away from the water he was navigating.

“What hand would the fecal matter be on precisely, sir?” he asked.

“The left,” I said.

Barry’s brow furrowed a little under the brim of his facetious large captain’s hat. “Well, I had no notion that that was there, sir. I’ll clean myself up and make myself presentable before we make landfall, that I promise you, sir.”

I sighed inwardly, deciding not to point out that the poltergeist had missed the point I had been trying to make.

Chapter 11

By the time that we drew into the mouth of a large bay that was, essentially, the entrance to the archipelago, I had stopped gawping at the general insanity of the floating islands and had started noticing details.

As well as the dozens of levitating little atolls, there were also bridges of rope, stone, rubber, and, in a couple of instances, something that looked very much like spider web connecting them. The place was a hive of activity. All kinds of creatures and sailors were swaggering from over the bridges and up the rope ladders that hung from some of the floating islands.

“Bit of a melting pot, is it not?” Enwyn said from beside me.

“That’s one way to describe it,” I agreed.

I saw whores, tailors, weapons-dealers, wine-sellers, robed monks, furred barbarians, leather-clad raiders, scrapping drunks, spell-weavers, longshoremen, merchants, jugglers, fishermen, pearl divers, talisman dealers, stevedores, lunatics, and, of course, pirates, of every race, color, shape, and description that I could ever have hoped to imagine. They were all going from one island to the next, swaggering along on business of their own.

Our schooner, followed by the vessel belonging to Captain Nutlee, glided smoothly into port, guided by the expert hands of good old Captain Chillgrave.

If he had seemed weak before, then coming into the port of Cupido Island looked to have breathed a new lease of life into Barry Chillgrave. It was almost as if the collection of stinks that assailed our nostrils had acted as a tonic to the malnourished captain. He stood up straighter and puffed out his scrawny chest. His eye glittered as our ship bumped gently into the piles of the dock. The not-unpleasant stench of fresh fish was in the air, along with the less tasty odors of sewage, blood, tar, and the metallic tang of raw magic.

“What’s the tactic here?” I asked Barry as a few of the crew, who had apparently traveled in flying and non-flying ships before, tossed ropes overboard and began tying the boat securely to the dock.

“How do you mean, sir?” Barry asked.

“Well, how do we go about getting to the Pirate Queen?” I asked. “We’re here, in her goddamn citadel, and I think it’d probably be the smart thing not to attract any undue attention to ourselves before…”

My voice trailed off.

Alura, who was standing nearby, tugged at my sleeve and said, “Justin, I think the Pirate Queen is going to know that Barry at least is here, and soon.”

She was right. I heard it now. And saw it too.

Looking around at the levels of docks and floating piers where a number of floating levitating ships were moored, I saw that there were many pirates, sailors, and fishermen pointing down toward us.

No, not toward us, I realized. Toward Barry.

It appeared that I had drastically underestimated just how fucking famous Barry was in certain circles—in this motley circle in particular.

Males and females of all kinds were jostling on the piers to try and get a look at the scrawny pirate captain. A few fights had predictably broken out as people fought for the best viewing spots. Spells flashed into the air. There was a rush of green flames as something combustible and magical was ignited and exploded skyward.

“Nothing like making a nice stealthy entrance,” I said to Cecilia, who had come to stand at my hand and gape up at the gathering crowds. “Your fucking great grandpa sure knows how to sneak into a place, doesn’t he?”

Cecilia did not answer. I could see that she was casing the faces peering down at us, trying to see if there was anyone out there that meant us ill.

She had her fucking work cut out for her, that was for sure. There were a buttload of rubberneckers gathering now, and I figured that the sooner we were off the ship and blended in with the crowd, the better.

“Barry,” I hissed into the ear of the pirate captain, who was standing and looking very heroic with his leg up on a coil of rope and one arm tucked behind him, “we should get the hell out of here, don’t you think?”

Barry stirred and shook his head a fraction. Then he said out of the corner of his mouth, “Nay, not just yet, sir. Now that we have our berth, we must wait for the harbormaster to give us the once over. No one sets foot on the docks of Cupido Island without his say-so, sir. Trying to leg it before he has seen us would do us more harm than good, sir.”

“And who the fuck is the harbormaster?” I asked, scanning the plethora of faces surrounding us.

“That would be him, I think, sir.” Barry nodded toward a large cyclops, dressed in a well-cut suit of mossy gray. He wore a high cocked hat, a quill and a dried fish of some description stuck into the band. He was surrounded by a collection of hard-faced men and women that may as well have had ‘BODYGUARD’ branded across their fronts and backs.

The cyclops strode down the wharf, kicking some unfortunate inebriate out of his way and into the sea.

Barry watched him come without a flicker. All around us the words ‘Captain Barry Chillgrave’ fell like leaves.

“So,” the cyclops said in a sandpaper rough voice, “it’s true what they’re saying all down the wharves.”

“Truth on the wharves,” Barry said. “That’d be a fuckin’ first.”

The cyclops did not smile. He didn’t look like he had smiled in a long time. Perhaps ever.

“Captain Chillgrave,” the cyclops said, taking a large ledger that had been handed to him by one of his flunkies. “What brings you to Cupido Island after all these centuries?”

“Pleasure, o’ course,” Barry said, with what he must have thought was a charming smile. In actual fact, it was the sort of look that a constipated piranha might wear after downing a bottle of laxatives.

The cyclops, unsurprisingly, did not smile. He made a small note with the quill that he had extracted from his hatband.

“And the name of this vessel?” he asked.

“Flying Dutch Rudder,” Barry said promptly, making me wince.

“Any booty to declare?” he asked.

“Just this kind,” Barry said, somehow managing to point with his eyebrow at Alura, Janet, Cecilia, and Enwyn who were standing nearby.

The cyclops made another note.

“Speakin’ of which,” Captain Chillgrave went on suavely, “I was hoping that, after so long in foreign parts, me and my companions here might be permitted to set foot on Cupido Island, so that we might partake of some of its delights?”

The cyclops looked up from his ledger and, for the first time, scanned the crew that were arrayed around the ship.

“They’re liveuns,” he said crisply.

“Aye, that they be,” Barry agreed. “Liveuns is what they are—flesh and bone and mortal blood. That ain’t a problem, is it?”

The cyclops considered Barry through his one eye. Barry looked the guy straight back with his one eye. It was a good old-fashioned one-eye stare off.

“Captain Chillgrave, unless you have been issued with a smuggler’s pass, you can only take three liveuns onto Cupido Island with you.”

Barry frowned. “Wasn’t like that last time I was here,” he grumbled threateningly.

The cyclops looked quite unruffled by Barry’s little show of anger. I guessed dealing with piratical poltergeists and psychopaths all day probably built up an immunity to menacing behavior. The guy looked about as chilled out as a cod on a slab of ice.

“Those,” he said evenly, “are the Pirate Queen’s orders.”

Barry, I could tell, was weighing up whether he should tell this bureaucratic harbormaster where to shove his orders, but thankfully refrained.

“Very well,” he said. “Ain’t a drama. Just a shame that the rest of my crew will have to stay cooped up on the tub.”

The pirate captain wheeled and pointed at me.

“Mr. Mauler,” he said in a commanding tone, “choose another couple of liveuns to accompany yourself.”

“Aye aye, Captain Chillgrave,” I said.

I picked Janet and Alura. I figured that a monarch and a streetwise chick like Janet would be a beneficial combination should we be brought before this Pirate Queen, Isobel Galeflint.

Once this had been quickly decided, Barry nodded at the cyclops harbormaster and strode over the gangplank with me, Janet, and Alura at his heels.

We walked briskly along the teeming wharf without a single backward glance at the ship. Barry walked as if he knew precisely where he was going which, for all I knew, he did.

It did not take me long to conclude that each of the isles had its own specialty, in the same way that certain streets or districts in a town sold certain goods or services.

So far as I could tell, this first island was, basically, like a theme park for, well, all things erotic. There were strip joints, brothels, peep shows, bawdy houses, and jerk-off theaters catering for every taste and demand. There were multitudes of whores, flocks of them. They hung like flowers in window-boxes, leaning out of the wooden buildings that bordered the wooden walkway.

Prostitutes of all different shapes, sexes, colors, and species draped themselves seductively around the lampposts and in the doorways, calling out to potential johns and swearing at them when they strolled on by without so much as casting an eye in their direction. I caught flashes of blue titties and orange titties, humongous titties and petite titties, and every size of knocker in between.

All these folk were, presumably, dead, with unfinished business to attend to back on Avalonia or wherever it was that they had come from, but that didn’t seem to mean that they couldn’t stop to smell the roses and get their freak on.

All around us, pirates cursed and spat and joked and laughed and brayed in one another’s faces. It was fucking bedlam. Not the sort of place that you’d recommend your dear old mom go with her girlfriends for a relaxing long weekend away.

Needless to say, there was some serious drinking going on. Hammered drunk punters looked to be getting tossed out of the drinking establishments that punctuated the rows of houses of ill repute at regular intervals.

The sound of fighting and fucking filled the air. It was so chaotic that it would have made Captain Jack Sparrow look like a schoolboy.

As we walked past one of the many, many gin palaces, there was a staccato rat-a-tat-tat and firecracker rattle of mana-fire and a couple of flashes of bright yellow light from inside.

To my everlasting elation, a scantily clad succubus pirate came smashing through one of the rickety front doors and landed heavily in the thoroughfare. A mana pistol skittered across the ground and plopped off the edge of the pier and into the sea. The ends of the succubus’s long fingers were smoking, and her face was covered in black smuts.

Not a single person walking past paid her any heed whatsoever, unless it was to give a drunken cheer of approval at the impromptu street theater.

The succubus pirate moaned and got to her feet just as another pirate stumped through the wrecked door after her. The newcomer was a huge female Jotunn with a wooden leg, a wooden arm, wearing a waistcoat with the arms cut off to reveal some of the most amateur tattoos that I had ever seen.

“That’s the fucking last time you try and fucking distract me with a drink and a joke so that you can take a peek at my fucking hand o’ cards, Thresher,” the Jotunn said, in a surprisingly feminine voice.

The disorientated succubus made a move, as if she was thinking of reaching for her vector or a weapon, but the Jotunn was too fast for her. With a roar, she hit the still smoking succubus in the breast with a pulverizing blast of icy snow that wrapped around the succubus like a feathery scarf of ice crystals.

Thresher, the succubus, cried out once, then her lean and almost naked body was engulfed in ice, her frozen expression a picture of shock and surprise, reminding me a lot of Wesley Snipes in Demolition Man, when Sly Stallone freezes him during the finale.

A few spectators wearing skimpy leather outfits had filtered out from the gin palace. A trio strippers from the establishment next door, who had been enjoying a cigarette break, had gathered to watch the magical scuffle.

“Seeing as you like to joke so much, here’s a fucking joke for you, Thresher,” the Jotunn snarled. “What do you call a pirate with no fucking arms and no fucking legs?”

With brutal strength, the Jotunn smashed the succubus’s frozen arms from her body. Then she reached behind her back and pulled an ice-bladed axe from a sheath and hacked her legs off at the knees.

“A fucking beginner!” she roared

Then, she picked up the succubus’s frozen torso and tossed her off the dock and into the sea. The unfortunate succubus bobbed in the water for a moment or two, before a slimy purple tentacle rose noiselessly out of the depths and pulled her below the surface.

“Note to self,” Alura said in my ear as we walked on by and the crowd dispersed, “do not go for a dip off the docks.”

“How does killing one of the undead work here?” I asked.

“I couldn’t tell you,” Alura said.

“If one of the undead kills another here,” Barry said. “The spirit that has been killed moves on to the realm beyond this one. They do not have the chance of going back to Avalonia, through the rift that we passed through to get here, and righting whatever wrong it was that brought them here.”

“Sounds complicated,” Janet said.

“It’s death,” Barry said. “Like taxes, it’s not as straightforward as ye’d think it’d be.”

We passed another collection of whores who were lingering around outside of a particularly rundown brothel.

“Captain Chillgrave, is that you?” one of the women, who looked a little worse for wear, asked as we passed.

“Aye, but I’ve no time for you just at present, lass,” Barry said, not even turning to look at the woman.

“Ah, fuck you!” the woman replied amiably. “Word is that you couldn’t have stolen the candy from a newborn toward the end of your career. Come back if you fancy learning a few pirate tricks from me. I’ll give you a fine rate!”

“Now there, lass,” Barry called over his shoulder as we turned up a reeking alleyway, “you won’t catch me coming down here, slapping the cock out of your mouth and telling you how to do your job, will you?”

“Barry?” I said, after we had left the whores behind and shinned up a rope ladder to gain access to a set of steps that wound a floating island.

“Aye, lad?” Barry said.

“You said that the departed spirits of those who have unfinished business come to the Spectral Realm instead of passing on,” I said.

“Aye, that’s correct, sir,” Barry affirmed.

I looked down at the rooftops of the shanty town we had just passed through. Ironically, the place looked more full of life than many places inhabited by the living.

“Well, why in the hell would anyone want to move on from this?” I asked. “It looks like good fun.”

“Oh, it is, sir, it is,” Barry said earnestly. “In truth, most poltergeists, ghosts, and various folks of the phantasmic persuasion don’t actually want to fix up whatever prevented from passing through to the next world. Not once they have spent more than about ten minutes in the Spectral Realm. Not when they discover the joys that abound here. And the last thing they want is to be is used as the raw ingredients for some Mage’s vector, you can quote me on that.”

We proceeded onward, making our way through a couple of other islands that were just as crazy and specialized as the sex-focused one.

There was a small isle on which everyone looked like all they did was eat buffet food. There were restaurants and bars and eateries of every description, and Barry informed me that you could eat here and never get full. The main street was a banquet table stuffed with folk all chowing down from ever-refilling plates.

“It’s for those that went hungry through life,” Barry explained as we skirted the main thoroughfare and crossed a bridge onto the next island. “Part of the brilliance of this realm is that it gives folks what they could never get back in the mortal realm.”

A shadow passed over us as we made our way across a long set of steppingstones that were actually the most laid-back turtles of all time. I looked up as a gentle, unearthly keening song floated down like a soft rain.

“Barry,” Janet said in a voice of forced calm, “are they flying whales?”

“Aye, miss, that they be,” Barry said, leading us on and not even looking up at the miraculous sight of the two pale pink whales gliding over us. They were as huge as two Boeing 747s and with eyes like a couple of amber exercise balls.

We moved our way through the smoky labyrinthine streets of an island that must have been presided over by Bob Marley, if the smell of the place and the way that everyone was grinning inanely at one another and munching on greasy food was anything to go by. After climbing up a winding spiral stair of floating steps, we found ourselves at a fifteen-foot-high solid golden gate.

To my surprise, and the evident surprise of Barry too, the gate swung smoothly open as we crested the top of the spiral stairs. Beyond it, gleaming like the gaudiest palace that I had ever seen, was none other than a full-scale replica of Castle Grayskull, built entirely out of golden bricks.

Somehow, the massive gaping maw that acted as the front door just wasn’t as scary as I remembered it as a kid. It must have been the gold, I reckoned. The whole place had a slightly cheesy, tasteless vibe to it. Like it had been commissioned by Mike Tyson or something.

“You must be kidding me,” I said softly, exchanging a look with Janet, who was the only other person there who had been to Earth.

For her part, Janet mouthed, “What the fuck?” back at me.

There was little time to goggle at Castle Goldskull, though, because my gaze was soon arrested by the figure standing in the middle of the path that led to the garish edifice.

She was standing, leaning on a spear tipped with a pulsating blade of purplish-blue crystal, as if she owned the joint.

Hell, I reminded myself, I supposed that she did. She owned the whole of fucking Cupido Island, if this was the woman I thought it must be, if this was Isobel Galeflint, Pirate Queen of the Spectral Realm.

It couldn’t have been anyone else. She was so ravishingly beautiful, so poised, so contemptuous in her glance. Backed by half a dozen nautical bodyguards, she had bright crimson, wavy hair and was dressed in a leather outfit that was part black and gold brocaded admiral’s jacket, part bikini, part lingerie, and part bondage outfit.

She looked like the leader of a punk band. She looked like a wanted renegade.

She looked, indisputably, like the boss.

Unlike the whole rigmarole that me and Leah had had to go through to enter the Castle of Ascendance back in Manafell, it seemed that the Pirate Queen was a more simplistic and confrontational gal than Queen Hagatha.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t the very late and very great Captain Barry fucking Chillgrave!” Isobel Galeflint said in greeting. “What the fuck are you doing here, eh, you most esteemed and lauded sky-pirate that you are? I thought you were too good for us lowly scum of the Spectral Realm, Chillgrave? I heard that you had got yourself a cute little Paraphernalia shop of some sort back in Avalonia? I heard that you had taken up the role of ye olde fucking poltergeist with the magical wares and vectors, flogging all that shit that you stole over the years to Academics and the like.”

“You heard a lot, Galeflint,” Barry said.

The Pirate Queen tossed her bright crimson hair out of her gray eyes, so that she could run them over Barry, Alura, Janet, and me. There was a blue-stone pendant around her neck that flicked out from her ample cleavage before disappearing back into it again. I found myself privately wishing that I could join it down there.

“Information is more valuable than gold, Chillgrave,” she said. She jerked a thumb over her shoulder at the golden remake of Castle Grayskull. “Though, it’s definitely not as aesthetically pleasing. So, you couldn’t hack life as a shopkeeper, then?”

“Nah, not in the end,” Barry said. “Going the honest route didn’t really work out for me,” Barry replied.

“That right? Well, it’s about time you came crawling back,” said Isobel Galeflint. “You’ve still got ships to build for me, remember? You’re indebted to me for… oh, I don’t know? What would it be now? A thousand more years?”

“Give or take a decade,” Barry said, looking rather unconcerned.

“Right,” Galeflint said, her tone one of honey and venom. “Well, if these three crewmembers are the only help you brought, then you’d best get cracking.”

Her eyes lingered on my face for a moment, and I found Justin junior stirring. There could be no doubt; there was something undeniably fuckable about the Pirate Queen.

“I won’t be doin’ that, Your Majesty,” Barry said, with a slightly sarcastic inflection. “We’ve got bigger problems, bigger makara to fry, than a simple debt being repaid. There’s war on the horizon. Universal Magic is dying. You’ve seen it. You’ve felt it. We’ve all seen it and felt it. And the Spectral Realm is entirely made o’ magic.”

“And what,” Isobel replied in a voice that was as smooth and dangerous as a velvet-covered razorblade, “the fucking hell do you think I’m going to do about that, hm?”

Barry studied his fingernails with an indifference that I thought ought to be applauded.

“Well, old girl,” he said. “If ye don’t fancy giving up the ghost just yet, and relinquishing all that you’ve strived so hard for, then I’m afraid you’ve only one choice.”

“And that is?” Isobel Galeflint asked, leaning forward with murder shining in the depths of her cool, gray eyes.

“You’re going to have to help us,” Barry said.

Chapter 12

For a very long, very fraught moment, Isobel Galeflint stared at Barry. The poltergeist had just requested her help, but it seemed like she would be reticent to give it. In fact, the look she was currently giving Barry made me wonder if she intended only to help us off the nearest cliff into the bay below. She stared at us appraisingly—a woman torn between curiosity and the desire to return to her solid gold house so that she could do whatever pirates did when it came to recreation.

“Are you going to kill us?” I asked, feigning nonchalance. “Only we’re on a bit of a tight schedule. You know how it is. Time and tide wait for no man and all that,” I added in at the end, trying to inject the right nautical theme into things.

Isobel cocked her head at me. I could almost see the wheels turning behind her pretty gray eyes. She might have looked savagely beautiful, as if she had come out the victor in a no holds barred battle to the death in one of Reno’s seedier strip joints, but I could tell that she was far from stupid. I was willing to bet that every instinct of hers was tied to self-preservation and to the expansion of her power. She was obviously a woman who, despite her fearsome reputation, was unlikely to let her bloodlust get the better of her.

“Hmm, kill you, kill you…” she mused in that quite pleasant voice of hers, which sat on the fence between refinement and violence. “That might be nice, don’t get me wrong. Me and the boys here were just about to wander down below to see if there wasn’t some sort of trouble that we could start.”

“And finish,” hissed one of her minions, a dude who had the head of a moray eel, if I had learned anything from Animal Planet.

The other pirate bodyguards laughed sycophantically—a half dozen good little suckholes employed for their strength and obedience more than their sense of humor.

“Yes, of course, Caxton, and finish,” Isobel Galeflint said. “We always finish things, don’t we, lads? However, I won’t jerk your chain and say that there isn’t some novelty in the idea of helping folks for once.” She tapped the butt of her magically tipped spear on the ground thoughtfully.

“Helpin’, boss?” said a woman with the smooth, almost otter-like, hide of a selkie. “Since when do we help anyone?”

“Anyone that ain’t ourselves, o’ course,” chipped in Caxton, the eel-man. He crossed arms that were about as big around the bicep as my thigh.

“Well…” the Pirate Queen said. “There’s a first time for everything, isn’t there? And if you’re going to help, it may as well be to save the fucking Universal Magic. Technically, we would be helping ourselves. I don’t know about you horrible lot, but I’m quite attached to my quiddity.”

Maybe Isobel Galeflint was looking to do a little penance for killing her sister? Maybe she had been searching, in an ever so private way, for a way to square herself in the eyes of the multiverse? I wasn’t sure what made me think that. Perhaps something in the very depths of those dangerous and clever gray eyes. If I could just warm her up a little—and me, Barry, Janet, and Alura could survive the next few seconds—I might be able to manipulate that lever in her.

Everyone has their levers: the ways in which they can be moved and steered. Even chicks that are as badass and cold-blooded as Isobel Galeflint.

The Pirate Queen considered the four of us for a full minute longer. Then, just as I believed that we were going to have to fight our way out of there after all, she cocked her head to the other side and addressed Barry.

“You mentioned a war, Chillgrave,” she said.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Alura said, turning up her diplomatic charm and deference to stun. Her accent was so smooth and creamy and rich that you could have spread it on a cracker and topped it with a chunk of honeycomb. “Yes indeed, there is a war coming. Most assuredly so.”

The Pirate Queen snorted with amusement, but she did not look displeased with the courteousness. I doubted that she often got addressed like that by the guy with the fucking eel head.

“What war? With whom?” she said brusquely. “What’s the nature of this fucking battle that you’re harping on about?”

“The war, the fight, that is looming on the horizon,” Janet said, “is an escalating war between the renegades that followed the Twin Spirits, Istrea and Zenidor, and your old stick in the mud friends, the Arcane Council.”

At the mention of the Arcane Council, I saw the fires rise in the Queen’s eyes. The mere mention of the Arcane Council had brought back memories—and they didn’t look like the happy, fluffy kind. In that moment, I saw clearly how it was that she had fought her way up to lead the pirates of the Spectral Realm. Next to me, Barry cleared his throat a little nervously.

Then, thankfully, the fire behind the gray eyes shrank down to embers. It didn’t look like anyone was going to be burned up just yet.

Isobel ran her hand up and down the shaft of her staff in a manner that, even in that tense situation, couldn’t help but catch my eye. Had we been back in Avalonia and he had been feeling himself, Barry would have doubtless said something inappropriate that would have landed us in the shit.

“Fine,” Isobel sighed regally, “I admit, you have me intrigued.”

“I doubt you’ve changed in all the years,” Barry said, “so I’m guessing you’re keen as ever for a fight if you can have one.”

Isobel smiled wolfishly. “Damn right, Chillgrave. I love to fight, and I’ve hated the Arcane Council ever since… well. Ever since I was shuffled off my mortal coil by them and their Creation Mages.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Janet shift on the balls of her feet. Thankfully, my girlfriend had more than enough sense not to look at me.

“You had no love for the Arcane Council before you were sent to the Spectral Realm, if the tales be true,” Barry said.

Isobel Galeflint’s lovely lips formed a salacious smile. “Quite,” she said, her tone indicating quite plainly that Barry had just ridden a unicycle over a tightrope stretched over the mouth of Hell. He had been very lucky not to fall. “However, as much as me and my crews enjoy a good scrap, I am no fool. I don't just go charging into a fight just for the sake of it, as much as I’d like too sometimes.”

“Very intelligent of you,” Janet said approvingly.

“Very female of you,” Alura said.

“You want details before you make a definite decision?” I asked the Pirate Queen.

Isobel nodded and spun her spear so that it rested on the brocade-covered shoulder of her leather admiral’s jacket. “I want to know more and, more specifically, I want to know what is in it for me.”

“Apart from continued existence?” I said before I could stop myself.

Isobel Galeflint stuck out her bottom lip and gave me a mock commiserating look. “Oh, there’s always a sweetener to any deal, chum,” she said. “Especially when you’re clearly in need of my services.”

She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “Follow me home to Castle Goldskull,” she said, indicating the enormous, ostentatious show of wealth behind her.

She actually called it Castle Goldskull, I thought. That can’t just be some sort of fucking out-there coincidence, can it? Has she been to Earth, or did she just somehow come across a He-Man comic in a treasure chest somewhere?

“I want details,” Isobel said again, turning to lead the way. “And, obviously, I want introductions.” She shot me a look over her shoulder as she swaggered away, her hips and ass moving in that special way that women have used for years to discombobulate the thinking process of men.

Her gang of bodyguards fell in around us as we followed her. I glanced at them all, my palm itching with the desire to summon my staff.

“Don’t mind the boys and girls,” the Pirate Queen said. “They’re just there to make sure that everyone behaves themselves, savvy?”

Barry, wanting to assert his position of captain perhaps, hurried to catch up with Isobel as she strode away on her long legs.

“I could use a drink, Captain Galeflint,” the old poltergeist said.

Isobel run her eyes over the famed sky-pirate. “You fucking look like he could use a drink, Chillgrave,” she said acidly. “You look like a big bag of blue waffle.”

I scratched my head again and looked at Janet, but the Storm Mage appeared to have not heard. She was too busy keeping an eye on our guards.

Was that an internet reference? I wondered.

Barry said nothing to this remark. He was still in need of the Death Energy that was rife on Cupido Island and especially around the Pirate Queen’s golden castle, which was built on the ruins of the temple where so many magical beings had apparently been sacrificed through the ages.

He looked over his bony shoulder at me, in the pretense of making sure that we were all following along behind, and we caught eyes. Well, he caught my eyes, and I caught his one eye. Obviously, he did not want to alert the Pirate Queen to the fact that he needed this magic force to regain his former vigor and power. He did not want to admit to Isobel Galeflint that he was weak, even if he did look it.

Barry knew, as well as I already did, that the Pirate Queen was a shrewd and stony-hearted woman who would not hesitate to capitalize on any sign of a weak spot. She was certainly canny enough to know far more than she was likely to let on. You didn’t become Queen of the Pirates of the Spectral Realm without being the most cunning and most ruthless out of an extremely cunning and ruthless bunch.

She would have made one hell of a politician or lobbyist or CEO back on Earth.

“And one more thing, Chillgrave,” Isobel said.

“What’s that Captain Galeflint?” Barry asked.

“I ain’t a captain, Captain,” Isobel said sweetly. “I have a fleet under me. I’m a fucking admiral.”

Chapter 13

The meeting room to which Isobel led us was nothing like what I might have expected. After being ushered through the gaping mouth of the enormous skull that made up the entire front wall of the castle, the Pirate Queen led the way down a hallway that would have been the throat of Castle Goldskull and then out into an expansive, light-filled space beyond.

I blinked. I had prepared myself for flickering torches, lots of dark wood, maybe a few piles of gold and silver booty tumbled in the corners, and at least one broached barrel of ale or a few discarded rum bottles. Such were my expectations.

Instead, the room reminded me of a piratical Austin Powers-esque, seventies swinger room. There was a sunken fire pit, crackling merrily despite the clement weather outside. This fire pit was surrounded by plush velvet couches, a couple of stripper poles, and an extensive bar of polished mahogany and glass behind which was an array of colored bottles that would have kept even Reginald and Igor Chaosbane busy for at least ten minutes. The furniture looked like it had been made using designs taken from mid-twentieth century Earth.

It was extremely disorientating, in a quite familiar and mundane way. I just couldn't get my head around how familiar everything was.

Our host must have seen me looking bemusedly around. As her flunkies spread themselves efficiently around the room in standard bodyguard positions, Isobel snapped at me, “What are you staring at like a landed trout, liveun?”

I opened my mouth and closed it a few times, like the fish indicated, and then said, “Nothing. It’s just… This is a nice room. Unexpectedly comfortable and… chic, I guess.”

Isobel’s eyes narrowed as she scanned my words for sarcasm. When she had apparently decided they were clean of irony, she said, in a slightly less spiky tone, “That is why pirates do what they do: comfort. We want to live easy lives in rich surroundings. You think I plunder and kill, smuggle and rob, just so that I can roll around in the filth like so many of my contemporaries are happy to do down below?”

I cocked my head. “Fair point.”

“Speaking of points,” Isobel said, turning to Barry. “Chillgrave, you better introduce your companions, before I decide that this unaccustomed show of hospitality has been a stupid idea and I have them fed to my sweet little pet kraken out in the bay. That’s the thing about a creature big enough to make a lunch out of an entire frigate: it’s always so damn hungry.”

“Where are my manners?” Barry said as the Pirate Queen deposited herself in a plush armchair, snapped her fingers at one of her guards, and pointed at the bar.

“You don’t have any, Chillgrave, you’re a pirate,” said Isobel brusquely. “Now, chop chop, before I start to chop chop.”

“This sparkling lass over here is Alura, Princess of the Gemstone Elementals,” Barry said without further ado. He obviously hoped to curry some goodwill by introducing our royal companion first.

Alura, playing her part as well as she ever did, performed a textbook curtsy.

“A pleasure, my Queen,” she said politely.

Isobel smirked, but said nothing as she accepted a crystal goblet of some bright pink sparkling liquid from the selkie woman. She nodded at the selkie and indicated our group. “A goblet of picaroon poteen for these people, Meng,” she ordered. “There are few things more pleasing to the ego than having a real-life liveun princess in our midst!” Her smirk widened, and she looked around at her selected bodyguards. “Look how far we’ve come, my hearties. From filibustering royalty to fucking entertaining them.”

There was a chorus of gurgling chuckles.

As the drinks were distributed, Barry introduced me.

“This lad here is Justin Mauler, a promising young War Mage from the Mazirian Academy, Admiral Galeflint,” the pirate captain said.

“Mauler… Mauler…” Isobel said, taking a sip of her picaroon poteen. “The name doesn’t set any bells to ringing in my mind, though your face is somehow not entirely alien to me, somehow.” She gazed at me thoughtfully for a few seconds and then transferred her contemplative gray eyes to Janet. “And who is this?”

“This is Miss Thunderstone,” Barry said. “Miss Janet Thunderstone.”

“Ah, now there is a name that gets the mental tocsins to pealing,” the Pirate Queen said, setting down her beverage and clapping her hands.

“You’ve heard of me?” Janet asked in surprise.

“No, not you specifically, sweetheart,” Isobel said. “But I’ve heard the name Thunderstone before—there are many specters within the Spectral Realm who have been killed at the hands of Idman Thunderstone or his men. There are many ghouls, revenants, and wights that would be mighty interested to make your acquaintance…”

The mood in the room shifted ever so slightly. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the guards along the walls sliding hands ever so casually toward sheaths and pockets.

Barry cleared his throat and said, in a commanding voice that likely served him very well back in his heyday, “Ye might want to tell those festerin’ cuttlefish of yours to settle down, Admiral Galeflint, and relax their hands, if they know what is good for ‘em.”

“Careful, Chillgrave,” Isobel said, her voice resonating with a violence that could come on as fast, as unexpected, and as unforgiving as a cannon ball up the fartbox. “Be very careful with the words that come tumbling from that grog-hole of yours, otherwise I might have to get you to make like a tree and—”

“And leave?” I blurted in surprise. Whenever I had tried any of the classic exit lines in Avalonia, nobody had ever really got them.

Isobel frowned, not taking her eyes off Barry. “I was going to say, you might have to make like a tree and wait there while I go and fetch an axe.”

Then Isobel suddenly thawed and sat back in her seat. I let out a silent sigh and took a mouthful of the picaroon poteen. It was good stuff. It tasted like cranberry juice and burned like everyone’s favorite cinnamon-flavored whisky.

“Enough with the pleasantries,” she said. “Enough with the posturing. I forget myself. It’s not every day that I get to sit here with a fine old salt like yourself, Chillgrave: a veritable fucking legend of a pirate both in the Spectral Realm and Avalonia.”

Barry inclined his head.

“Now, carry on and tell me about this war,” Isobel said. “Miss Thunderstone mentioned something earlier about some Twin Spirits. Who the fuck may they be, pray? And how is it that I’ve never fucking heard of them?”

“They would have been after your time,” I said, deciding to take the lead before Barry could make an irrevocable balls-up. The poltergeist looked relieved at this and sank back in his chair. “They were a couple of mages, a couple of very powerful mages that set out to, as far as I can gatherer, save the world. One of the methods that they proposed on using to achieve this was genocide, but there is compelling evidence now to suggest that there was another less, well, unethical way for them to achieve their goal. The Arcane Council used a Kingdom-wide glamor to cover up the attempts of these two powerful War Mages—the Twin Spirits, Istrea and Zenidor. They effectively wiped them from history, which is why you probably haven’t heard of them, even from the recently deceased who have come through the Spectral Realm.”

“A glamor that affected the hive memory of almost the entire Kingdom of Avalonia…” Isobel said, whistling softly. “And they have the gall to call me a monster. Why did they do this, Justin Mauler?”

“They saw them as, in their attempt to save the Universal Magic and the ending of all things magical, trying to disrupt the good thing that the Arcane Council had going on, I guess,” I said. “You know what total low-down, dirty bastards governments can be.”

“I think we’re all aware of that fact,” Isobel said, and her pirate bodyguards grumbled their agreement. “I must say, though, Justin, that I’m interested to see that, apparently, you and your mates seem to have shaken off the crushing power of the Arcane Council’s government. That’s a fucking rare thing. Most people find it too confronting to even acknowledge that they have been hoodwinked by the very people who are supposed to look after them and better their lives.”

It was an astute observation for a pirate. However, with every minute that passed, I got the impression that Isobel Galeflint was far more than just a pirate. She was, I remembered with a lurch, the sister of a Queen.

“Anyway, the Twin Spirits were defeated in the Void Wars,” Janet said, getting the conversation back on track.

“And now it has fallen to us to take up the sword and continue the fight that Istrea and Zenidor started,” said Alura eloquently, her face glimmering and glittering in the sunlight that streamed in through the large windows.

“And we’re running out of time,” I said, leaning forward in my chair. “Things are really getting down to the wire with the draining of the magic from the world.”

“And not just the world o’ the livin’, Admiral Galeflint,” Barry said. “It’s the whole, entire ruddy Multiverse that is at stake here, and every mortal and spirit that calls it home.”

Isobel regarded us as she held out her goblet and the selkie, Meng, refilled it from a decanter.

“The Arcane Council, being the dumbass government entity that they are, is convinced that the rebels want to take power from them and supplant Queen Hagatha,” I said. “They can’t get their peanut-sized brains around the idea that there is far more at stake than just who sits on some big chair and makes all the rules.”

“And you’re willing to fight against, and exchange blood and lives with, the Arcane Council, are you?” Isobel asked. Her eyes were fixed on my face, and she looked totally caught up in the joint narrative that the four of us were weaving.

“Reginald Chaosbane, the Headmaster of the Mazirian Academy and the dude that is basically orchestrating this whole thing, didn’t really want to butt heads with the Council, I don’t think,” I said.

“There’s a Chaosbane leading this little rebellion?” the Pirate Queen interjected.

“Aye, that there is,” Barry affirmed.

“Strike my colors, but if they’re in any way as cracked as the Chaosbanes that I used to know, then that must make for some interesting excursions,” Isobel said.

“You’ve no idea,” I said truthfully.

Janet and Alura exchanged glances.

“Bu, you’re resolved on this course you’ve set out on?” Isobel said. “On rebellion, I mean. You’re not all going to get all squeamish when the fighting starts?”

“We’ve been fighting for months,” Janet said bluntly. “We’re War Mages in training maybe, but we’ve seen more than our fair share of fucked up shit.”

“Mostly thanks to Headmaster Chaosbane,” Alura said.

I nodded. “We’re not afraid of getting our hands dirty, not if we don’t have to. It’d be nice if we could do this the diplomatic way, but it looks like they are some bad eggs in the Arcane Council and they’re basically going to start a war.”

“They do say that if you want to make an omelet then you have to be willing to break some eggs,” the Pirate Queen said. “May as well be bad ones, if that’s the case.”

“This war promises to be one mother of an omelet,” Janet said grimly.

“Janet is right,” I said. “And there is most definitely going to be a battle, whether Reginald Chaosbane, even if he were some sort of Trappist monk, wants it or not.”

“So, those bad eggs and the gullible minions that follow them are going to have to be smashed and whisked up?” Isobel mused. “All so that the rest of the entire Multiverse can enjoy another day?”

“And another breakfast,” I said.

Isobel looked very thoughtful. I could tell that we had piqued the interest of the Pirate Queen in no uncertain way.

“What I find quite ridiculous,” she said, draining her goblet once more and waving at Meng to refill everyone’s cups after she had done hers, “is that there were these Twin Spirits during the Void Wars and I didn’t even hear of the fuckers.”

“Well, as we said, Admiral,” Barry said, “there was that glamor that the Arcane Council implemented.”

“Yes, but if they were defeated, I thought that they would have passed through the Spectral realm, surely,” Isobel said, swirling her goblet around in a distracted manner. “If there were ever any two people with a job to finish…”

I did not mention that the two extremely powerful spirits we were discussing were currently residing in my staff.

“I’m hundreds of years old, for gods’ sake,” the Pirate Queen was saying to herself.

“Hundreds of years old?” I said incredulously, trying not to run my eyes over the woman’s outstandingly fantastic body. I failed. Miserably.

“Well, technically, I’m only twenty-three, but I’ve been in the Spectral Realm for hundreds of years,” Isobel replied, the glint in her gray eyes telling me that my disbelief could very well be interpreted as a compliment.

I cleared my throat and managed to peel my eyes away from the Pirate Queen’s plunging neckline.

“Chattin’ with Chopsticks Nutlee,” Barry said, “I believe that you have not been really concerning yourself with Avalonian affairs, Admiral, rather concentrating on cementing your position in the Spectral Realm and running your smuggling operations from here.”

Isobel Galeflint snorted again. She was as skeptical and untrusting as I would have expected someone surrounded by the untrustworthy and vicious to be.

“You’re like one of those crazy old uncles or something,” she said absently, “who just says whatever shit pops into his addled old head, no matter if it might land you knee deep in shit water.”

“You don’t sound totally convinced with the idea of joining us,” I said.

“My, you’re a perceptive one, Justin Mauler,” the Pirate Queen said scathingly. “And you are correct. You see, I have a lot to lose. More than most.”

I nodded, racking my brain for a way that I could alleviate her concerns. There was only one way that I could really see, and that was for her to share in the vision that had cast aside the glamor from the minds of all my friends. And to do that...

“You just need to hold my staff, and all will be revealed, Admiral Galeflint,” I said. “Take hold of my staff, and you’ll see that we’re not trying to pull the wool over your eyes.”

When the Pirate Queen burst out laughing, along with the other female bodyguards surrounding us, I realized that I should have maybe chosen my words a little more carefully.

To my surprise, though, Isobel Galeflint got agilely to her feet and came to sit on the arm of the velvet armchair that I was sitting in.

I could feel Alura and Janet bristling nearby, but they kept their cool.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Isobel asked, a predatory grin spreading across her face.

“I think I might have come across as meaning something that I didn’t…” I started to say, but Isobel patted my shoulder and my words trailed away. She smelled good; like gunpowder and spices, wood polish and salt.

“No, I don’t think I’ll be holding your staff this evening, Justin Mauler,” the Pirate Queen said. “Although, I must say, you are a fine little specimen, aren’t you? What realm do you come from?”

“Earth,” I croaked.

Suddenly, Isobel Galeflint was all enthusiasm and almost girlish delight. The change from swashbuckling demon dressed in admiral’s bondage costume was remarkable.

“Earth?” she repeated.

“That’s right,” I said.

“As in planet Earth, of the human race?” she asked.

I nodded mutely.

The Pirate Queen hauled me bodily to my feet. For someone who was supposed to be a phantom, she was fucking strong and I couldn’t have resisted her, even if I had wanted to.

“Come with me,” she said curtly. “Meng, Caxton, treat our visitors to anything they might want. Justin Mauler and I will be back soon.”

“Boss, are you sure you don’t want someone to go with you?” the eel-headed Caxton rasped.

“If he misbehaves, I’ll tear his fucking spine out,” Isobel said as she led me from the room. “The rest of you dogs will play nice.”

The Pirate Queen dragged me down a hall by the arm, until we stood outside a door that was constructed out of bones.

Isobel hissed a few words into the mouth of a skull off to one side, and the door swung soundlessly open. With her tongue between her teeth and every sign of enjoyment on her face, Isobel Galeflint propelled me inside.

It was a massive chamber, lit by a couple of enormous chandeliers hung with glowing crystal skulls. For the first couple of moments, all I could do was turn on the spot and gaze around in wide-eyed wonder.

“What the fuck…” I managed after a little bit.

“Do you like it? Is it authentic?” the Pirate Queen asked me.

It was like some dude’s wet-dream version of a man cave. There was Earthly pop culture everywhere. Pinball machines and retro arcade machines lined the walls. I saw Mortal Kombat, King of Fighters, Virtua Fighter, Donkey Kong, Centipede, and many more. I didn’t know how the fuck they were powered in a world that didn’t have electricity, but I assumed it was magic of a kind.

There were all kinds of Earth brand beer bottles arranged along shelves, along with classic American car badges, cigarette memorabilia, and sports teams gear. There were baseballs signed by such greats as Willie Mays, Ty Cobb, and Jackie Robinson. There were some framed movie posters—Captain Blood, The Sea Hawk, and The Crimson Pirate.

There were records stuffed into treasure chests, figurines of famous comic book characters, and replicas of cars, planes, and tanks. There was everything and anything that any nerd, collector, or enthusiast could really wish to see.

“It’s fucking incredible!” I said, with absolute honesty.

Isobel Galeflint’s face lit up with genuine delight. It made her look like a totally different person than the one she had been back in the lounging area. Both personas had been smoking hot, don’t get me wrong, but it was hard to believe that the smile on the face of the woman standing in this cave of wonders was the smile of someone who had killed her own sister and wrested power from the Arcane Council.

“How did you come by all this stuff?” I asked, my eyes alighting on a pristine issue of Amazing Fantasy #15.

Isobel shrugged. “I’m a pirate. I collect things. I have certain tastes, and the money and willpower to accumulate them. That’s all.”

“Have you ever been to Earth?” I asked.

“No, never,” Isobel said wistfully. “Keeping all those down below under my thumb does not allow me to stray far from Cupido Island, let alone travel to other worlds. Tell me, what is it like? It must be fascinating, if these treasures are anything to go by.”

I grinned to myself.

“What’s so funny?” Isobel asked me sharply.

“Nothing,” I said quickly, unable to wipe the smile from my lips. “It’s just ironic, you know. Here we are standing on an island that is fucking levitating and you’re telling me that Earth must be fascinating. If that’s not a case of the grass always being greener, I don’t know what is.”

“The grass is greener on Earth?” Isobel asked, her nose wrinkling a little.

“No, it’s just a… Never mind,” I said.

We continued looking at the awesome collection in silence for a while. Then, Isobel said, “You are not from Avalonia.”

“No,” I agreed.

“Yet you are willing to fight against the Arcane Council?” the Pirate Queen said.

I shrugged.

“You are willing to die for the people of Avalonia, though, and for this Reginald Chaosbane and all the others?” Isobel pressed.

“It’s not all about fighting for your country,” I said. “It’s more about fighting for my friends. And for the whole fucking Multiverse, of course. Can’t forget that.”

“Why?” Isobel asked. “Why get mixed up in it?”

I didn’t know why I decided to come clean just then. Maybe I couldn’t be assed with avoiding the topic anymore, or maybe it was because the sexy Pirate Queen had shown me inside this secret little room of hers.

“The Twin Spirits were my parents,” I said simply. “If it’s not up to me to carry on where they left off, then who else does the responsibility fall to? Plus, at the end of the day, if the Multiverse ends, then everyone and everything is totally fucked anyway.”

I flopped down on one of those dope Space Invader couches, which proved to be just as uncomfortable as it looked. Isobel sat down next to me.

“Look, Isobel,” I said, becoming very aware of how close we were on that little sofa, “I’ve never been one for all the ‘sirs’ or ‘Admirals’ or any of that. I’ve never been good at recognizing authority, really. So, let me just say this: I know you're a badass and everything, and I know you’ve done some gnarly shit in your time, but you also seem to me like you have a streak of good in you.”

Isobel Galeflint’s lips drew back from her teeth in an instinctive snarl, and I raised my hands to head her off.

“I’m just saying,” I said quickly, “that, maybe, doing this might go some way to tipping the scales back in the favor of good for you, that’s all.”

Isobel’s eyes narrowed, the stormy gray of them becoming unreadable to me under all the mascara, which seemed to be a bit of a pirate prerequisite. However, she didn’t bite my head off, or rip my spine out, which I took to be a promising sign.

She didn’t say anything though, either.

“There’s something else, too,” I began. “A Stronghold. Or a castle. Or maybe an underwater fortress. I’m not sure. It belonged to the Twin Spirits. You wouldn’t happen to know where it is, would you?”

“Maybe,” Isobel said. “But that kind of information is the kind that is worth more than a few thousand buried treasure chests. And I don’t suppose you have even one such chest hiding on your person, do you, Justin?”

“Nope,” I said. “So you do know where such a Stronghold is located?”

Isobel simply stared at me. “Maybe,” she repeated.

“At least, if you can’t join us or tell us where the Stronghold is, at least help Barry Chillgrave out,” I said, giving her what I hoped she saw as a friendly nudge in the ribs.

“Help him out?” the Pirate Queen asked. “Help him out how? I thought, when I first saw him, that he was here to deliver me some sort of ultimatum. I thought the famous old fuck wanted to try and reclaim his place at the top of pirate hierarchy.”

She laughed with derision and settled back, as casually as that Space Invaders sofa would allow.

I chuckled along dutifully because I had seen an opening to help Barry get a little of what he needed. I wasn’t sure if Isobel was going to help us out or not—I hoped so, but I couldn’t be sure. If she denied us, though, it would mean that we might have to ice her; a thought which didn’t sit particularly well with me, I admit, but still.

One thing that couldn’t hurt us, no matter what the future had in store, was to have Barry Chillgrave operating at one hundred percent. He might have been a ridiculous son of a bitch at the best of times, with a truly astounding ability to say the wrong thing at the wrong time, but there was no denying he was powerful, had seen a thing or two, and had a buttload of tricks up his sleeves.

“No,” I said to Isobel. “No, no, it’s nothing like that. Barry is semi-retired, but the daft old bastard wants to go out in a blaze of glory, as far as I can see. You noticed that he is weakened and frail, yeah?”

“I did,” Isobel said. “I was glad to see it too. The last thing I felt like doing today was eradicating a legend.”

“He’s not going to give you any cause to do that,” I said. “But if you’re not going to go against the Arcane Council with us, maybe you could allow the old guy to tap into some of the Death Energy that is stored here? To regain some of his powers.”

“And why the hell would I want to give Captain Barry Chillgrave his powers back?” the Pirate Queen asked icily.

“Because Barry agreed to, or I should say listened to, a deal put forth by Captain Chopsticks Nutlee to try and steal the Death Energy here, purloin your gold, and kill you,” I said succinctly.

The Pirate Queen’s eyes went from narrow to wide in the space of a heartbeat. Not only that, but that fire that I had seen flickering in their depths earlier leapt up once more.

“However, he suspected Chopsticks Nutlee of being a dirty double-crossing dog, apt to talk more hot air and be more full of shit than your average politician,” I said. “And was going to bring this bit of skullduggery—if I’m using that term correctly—to your attention when he got a moment. He thought that giving you Chopsticks Nutlee as a gift might go some way to gaining some of your goodwill.”

Isobel was breathing heavily through her nose. She managed to get herself under control, with some difficulty, and said, “I’m impressed with you being so upfront, Justin Mauler.”

I waved that away.

“Like I said, I know you’re a fucking badass and have a hell of a reputation, but there’s something about you that I like—and it’s not just that outfit,” I told her with a small smile.

I leaned a little closer to the Pirate Queen, figuring that there would be precious few people who had the balls to try and come onto her. Confidence is something that women find attractive, after all. Once more, I was enveloped in that briny, exotic, spiciness that reminded me of vacations and sex in straw-roofed beach huts, somehow.

“I must say that your candor is going a long way to convince me,” Isobel said, her voice dropping an octave or two. “Besides, like I said, I do so love a bit of rough and tumble…”

We sat, our faces not more than a couple of hand spans apart, looking into one another’s eyes. I would have loved to lean in and kiss her then, but I couldn’t do that, not before she had given me what I wanted. I didn’t want to make it too easy for her.

“Very well,” the feared and lauded Pirate Queen said, her breath warm and alcohol-scented against my face, “Barry may replenish his powers at the Death Font.”

I didn’t know what the fuck the Death Font was, but I doubted it was anything to do with typography. It sounded like Isobel was doing Barry a solid though, so I said, “Excellent. The old fart will be pleased. I owe you one, Admiral Galeflint.”

Her sea-gray eyes appraised me.

“And I shan’t bloody well forget it,” Isobel said.

She got gracefully to her feet and motioned that I should do the same.

“You and the two other liveuns can pass the night at Castle Goldskull tonight,” the Pirate Queen said graciously, “while Barry replenishes himself by the light of the moon at the Death Font.”

“That’s good of you,” I said in thanks.

“It is, isn’t it?” Isobel said, closing the door behind us as we exited the room filled with Earthly memorabilia.

As we walked back to the seventies-inspired lounge room, I reached out and touched Isobel’s leather-clad elbow.

“Look,” I said, “I’ve just got to know. This castle of yours, was it always like this or are you just a massive He-Man fan?”

Isobel smiled widely.

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, Justin Mauler,” she said sweetly. “Surely, that would be what I have learned is called… copyright infringement, wouldn’t it?”

Chapter 14

The next morning, I awoke to a soft and insistent tapping sound on the window and the variety of morning wood that made me wonder how I had any blood left in the upper reaches of my body. My brain had conjured the most detailed erotic dreams, featuring Isobel Galeflint. The sound at the window though, was quite puzzling.

I pushed the luxurious bed covers off me and sat up. At the culmination of the previous evening, after a delightful supper of fresh seafood and a variety of excellent wines, Janet, Alura, and I had all been escorted to separate rooms. I knew that Janet and Alura would have preferred to share my room, and I was in agreement with them, but we were firmly escorted by a guard to our own quarters after dinner.

“It’s not you are untrustworthy,” Isobel had said, waving an airy hand as we were led away, “it’s just that I don’t trust anyone at all. No point tempting you to get up to any hijinks in the night, is there? I’d hate to have to set this new leaf, which I have apparently turned in letting you into Castle Goldskull, on fire.”

Barry had, of course, remained behind. He and Isobel were apparently going to head down to the Death Font after a few more hours of talk, when the moon was at the absolute full.

As I kicked back the covers, swung my legs out of bed, and rubbed the sleep from my eyes, I wondered if the Death Font had done all it was supposed to on Barry.

The gentle tapping on the window continued.

I padded across the floor, covered in a plethora of rugs and carpets, and made my way to the enormous floor to ceiling window that was covered with a thick velvet curtain.

Not fearing that anything hostile could get to me here, at the heart of the Pirate Queen’s lair, I pulled back the curtains and let the broad light of day flood into the room.

For a moment, I recoiled and blinked in the bright sunshine, feeling like one of Dracula’s close relations. When my pupils had grown accustomed to the tropical glare of the gorgeous Spectral Realm morning, I saw what was making the unabating soft tapping noise.

It was a homing phoenix. One of the origami-style, magically enchanted parchment birds that mages could use to communicate to one another. It was the Avalonian equivalent of the self-destructing tape recorders that the Impossible Mission Force agents used in the Mission Impossible movies.

“Who’s sending me mail?” I asked myself. I opened the window, and the papery bird flapped its way into the room and landed on the gilt dressing table sitting in one corner.

I felt a strange, swirling sense of foreboding. Was this a communication telling me that one of the other ships had run into difficulties? Was one of the fraternity brothers going to tell me that some sort of trouble was afoot?

“Shut the fuck up, imagination,” I growled to myself as I picked up my cloak and slung it around my bare shoulders, “it’s too early for your shit.”

With a thought, I turned the cloak into a simple pair of black combat-style pants, plain linen shirt, and light black jacket.

I stood in front of the homing phoenix, but I wasn’t quite sure where to start in actually retrieving the message. I could glimpse pen strokes within the tight furl of its main body, but I couldn’t find a fold or anything to grab to get it open.

“Uh, a little help?” I ventured.

The parchment bird had no facial expression, only a rudimentary tilt of its head, but it still managed to give me a pretty condescending look all the same. It was almost as if it was saying, “And you call yourself a mage?”

“I’m still learning here,” I said defensively.

The phoenix’s simple beak opened and then folded back, revealing a split along its bottom jaw.

“Thanks,” I muttered and dug my fingers into the slit.

The homing phoenix went limp, its wings spreading out and its tail uncurling. In no time at all, where once there had been an intricate origami bird, there was now only a slightly curling sheet of parchment lying on the dressing table.

The script that flowed across the missive was so neat and elegant that it looked like it had come straight out of the props store of some Jane Austen period drama. If it hadn’t been for the series of red ring marks that hinted very strongly of red wine, not to mention the bubbled corner where something highly corrosive had been spilt, I might not have been able to guess who’d sent it.

Mr. Mauler,

I hope this missive finds you well. In fact, I hope this missive finds you at all. I am dictating this message to Igor, as I find myself inadvertently and temporarily—I hope—to have lost the use of my arms. Nothing to worry about, I assure you, merely the side-effect of too much wizard cabbage, which slipped my mind. However, Igor is also enchanting the homing phoenix, so if it does not reach you, it will be his guts that I will have for garters.

I am writing in the hope that you, your four female companions, and the illustrious Captain Chillgrave might have found yourselves in the company of some pirates. One specific pirate, to be precise.

If this is so, and she has not slain you or chased you away already, I would urge you to gain her favor. The time is coming when all good people—even if they might not appear so ‘good’ on paper—need to come to the aid of the collective whole. I would implore you to ensure that this famed female, that you may or may not meet, be swayed into being able to be counted on for the final battle with the Arcane Council. The pirates of the Spectral Realm are nothing if not scrappy fighters, and fierce.

As far as I am aware, everyone else is doing their part. Igor and I are running our ships together, as it turns out that my dear cousin has all the nautical navigation skills of a mountain goat with cataracts. As far as I know, the other ladies are perfectly safe, with one exception. Currently, we have no idea where Mallory Entwistle is. I have been in correspondence to those leading the other ships, and no one knows where she’s toddled off to.

Still, I’m sure she will turn up. She is highly capable, as you know, and would stick in the craw of anyone foolish enough to try and do her harm.

I reiterate, Mr. Mauler, we need the pirates who sail and smuggle under the command of the woman who has been such a thorn in the side of the Arcane Council, even in death.

Wishing you well, and hope you’re enjoying this splendidly clement weather, mate.

R. Chaosbane.

I read through the letter once more. I would have given it another once over, but the corners of the parchment began to smolder, and I just had time to throw the homing phoenix out onto the balcony before it burst into blue flames and withered away into ash.

So, the Headmaster wanted me to do exactly what I was currently doing: strengthening ties with the head honcho of the Spectral Realm pirates. Although the way that he casually mentioned that Mallory Entwistle had upped and disappeared was more troubling.

Still, I’m sure she’ll turn up…

It was the sort of way that you might mention your hope that the remote for the television will resurface. Still, that was Reginald Chaosbane for you. I doubted that anything short of the actual end of the world would raise his heart rate above its resting rhythm.

The rest of the message sounded hopeful, though, as far as it went. Everyone was still doing what they could for the cause, seeing if they could sniff out the location of the Twin Spirit’s Stronghold. I figured that all I could do at my end was continue down the path that Alura, Janet, Barry, and I had set out on.

With this decision made, I pulled on my boots, opened the door, and strode out into the hall. There was a guard stationed outside my door, and he led me down to where Barry and our host, Isobel were already sitting and chatting.

Once more, I was struck by how different the interior and the vibe of Castle Goldskull was to any expectation I might have had regarding pirate queens and their taste in decorating.

Isobel Galeflint and Barry were sitting outside on a deck that looked to have been expertly crafted from repurposed ship timbers. The al fresco setting was straight out of a catalogue for vacations to the Cinque Terre. The deck merged into a lawn, bordered on either side by twelve-foot hedges, which ran down a slight slope to the edge of the floating island, before it dropped away into the azure seas below.

The underside of the leaves of the towering hedges, which provided extra privacy and security to the outdoor space, were bright gold. They glimmered and glittered in the soft rays of the morning sun, mirroring the stark golden exterior of the massive house behind us. It was a truly remarkable exterior space.

Despite the relaxed and luxurious surroundings, I noticed numerous guards stationed around the verdant walls of the hedges. They were keeping wary eyes on Barry as he chatted with Isobel. As the guards outside the separate bedrooms proclaimed, it was clear that Isobel did not trust us just yet.

“Justin!” the Pirate Queen said in a lazily regal voice. “Come and join us. Don’t let the girls and boys around the garden put you off. They’ve already eaten and won’t bite you, unless I tell them to. I’m yet to see your two female friends, but I’m sure they’ll be along shortly.”

I walked slowly over to the table. Far below us, I could hear the gentle hiss and murmur of the surf breaking. I had to admit, tactical advantages aside, Isobel Galeflint most definitely had one of the best real estate spots in town.

I sat between the Pirate Queen and the poltergeist sky-pirate. I turned and looked at Barry as I reached for the steaming coffee pot and the “Good morning” that I had been about to send his way died in my throat.

Barry looked like a new man. Or, well, a new ghost, I supposed. Or poltergeist. Or whatever the heck the guy was in this realm.

He no longer looked weak and sickly. On the contrary, he looked like he was about to explode with zestful vivacity. Instead of the greenish glow that had surrounded him and emanated out from him when he had been a poltergeist in Avalonia, Barry now transmitted a soft golden radiance. It was only subtle, and you only really saw it out of the corner of your eye, or when you weren’t looking directly at him. However, it was there, and it made me hopeful that my old pal was back to firing on all cylinders.

Judging by the way that he was grinning in a slightly maniacal fashion, I thought that he was and then some.

“Barry,” I said, “you don’t look like as much of a piece of shit as you did yesterday. I trust that the whole Death Font visit thing went well?”

Barry’s smile widened to the point where I thought that if he didn’t rein it in soon, the top of his head was likely to fall off.

“Oh, aye, sir,” he said, running his thumb and forefinger along his terrible mustache and laughing delightedly at me. “Oh, aye, it went marvelously, sir, marvelously! Well, grab me by the main mast and twirl me about, but I’ve not felt this full of piss and vinegar for many moons, sir!”

“Good to hear it, Barry,” I said, patting the pirate on the shoulder and feeling the firmness and strength in him in the way that he didn’t even budge. “Good to hear.”

“Yes,” Isobel said, toying with a piece of fruit on her plate, “Captain Chillgrave certainly is looking like a million pieces of eight, is he not? He’s got all the old vitality that the old tales of him tell of, I believe. He’s looking fitter and brighter of eye than he was last night at any rate. Not that such a thing would have been hard. I’ve seen zombies that looked livelier than he did last night. Now look at him—he’s practically crackling and sparking with vigor.”

Barry got up from the table, swooped off his hat, and bowed low before the Pirate Queen. “Aye, and I will not hesitate in saying that I feel myself sorely in your debt, Admiral Galeflint.”

My gaze flicked over to Isobel, and I caught the cunning gleam in her own eyes. Obviously, having the esteemed and famous Captain Barry Chillgrave owe her one was something that she would not overlook.

I didn’t want to piss on anyone’s bonfire, but I also knew that it was always best to have all the cards laid out on the table, so I spoke up.

“Yeah, it’s a great thing that Isobel did, Barry, letting you access her Death Font, but there’s the deal you struck with Chopsticks Nutlee that you need to remember. Obviously, you’re going to have to let her down on the whole killing the Pirate Queen and stealing all her treasure plan.”

Isobel snorted and gave me a half grin, which told me she would have loved to see Barry and Captain Nutlee try and kill her.

“Ye know what I’m going to say to that great succulent sea cow when I next see her?” Barry said, replacing his hat and pouring himself a steaming cup of coffee.

“Avast there, matey, and walk your fat ass off the plank?” I said.

Barry looked taken aback. “I was going to say, ‘Ready, steady, go fuck yourself!’ but your way has a more piratical sound to it, don’t it?”

The door to Castle Goldskull opened, and Alura and Janet came out into the open air. They were looking smoking hot as usual, though there was a wariness to the way they approached the table and sat down. They reached for cups of coffee and food, but only nodded so as not to interrupt the conversation they had walked in on.

Isobel raised her hand and flapped it around her head as if she were shooing away a bothersome fly.

“Bah, fuck that sluggard Chopsticks Nutlee. Pirates wouldn’t be pirates if they didn’t betray one another,” she continued, somehow managing to swagger while sitting. She turned her full attention on me, those sea gray eyes of hers piercing me with their intensity. “Justin, as surprised as I might have seemed last night when you confided in me, I have to admit that I wasn’t really that surprised.”

Janet paused in the act of plastering a bagel with cream cheese, and Alura cast me a surreptitious look from under her crystalline eyelids. The air was suddenly thick with tension.

Barry cleared his throat and looked from Isobel to me and then around at the guards that lined the hedges.

“Relax, all of you, relax,” Isobel said, smiling wickedly around at us all. “Admittedly, I think that you’d be hanging by your entrails from one of my balconies right now, had it not been for the fact that Justin here came clean about your plans last night, but luckily for you, he did.”

Janet resumed cream cheesing her bagel, and Alura added cream and sugar to her cup of coffee.

“Why do you think I let you replenish yourself at the Death Font, Chillgrave? Out of the goodness of my heart?” the Pirate Queen said casually. “I’m fresh out of goodness and my heart hasn’t pulled its weight in years.”

“You looked a little taken aback,” I said. “When I told you about Nutlee’s proposition to Barry.”

“That was more because you told me the truth,” Isobel said. “The truth is a very rare beast in the Spectral Realms. So rare that it often completely throws and obfuscates the minds of those who hear it. It was the novelty of you coming clean with me that took me by surprise, not the actual news itself.”

“You already knew about the deal with Nutlee?” I asked.

“Correct,” said Isobel. “And how could I not? Nutlee already sent a messenger to me, divulging your plan to kill me and steal my loot and Death Energy, before either of your ships had so much as bumped their keels against the Cupido Island wharves.”

I had thought that Barry might fly into a rage at this, but it appeared that the poltergeist captain understood the measure of his fellow pirate captain all along. He chuckled to himself and shook his head.

“Aye, I’ve met the likes of Chopsticks Nutlee before,” he said. “You can practically smell the stink o’ betrayal on her like a cloying perfume. It’s predictable pirates like her that give the whole profession a bad name. No originality, ye know.”

After taking a dainty sip of her coffee, Alura put down her cup and addressed Isobel with as much dignity and politeness as I imagined anyone had ever shown her since she had been killed and sent to the Spectral Realm.

“Your Majesty,” she said, “now that you have at least made up your mind not to have us killed just yet, I was wondering if I might ask you another question?”

“And what’s that, diamond girl?” Isobel said.

“Have you given any more thought to aiding us in the mission that we spoke of last night? Will you side with us against the Arcane Council?” Alura asked.

Isobel Galeflint studied Alura’s pretty face carefully. She tapped a finger on the pristine white tablecloth and traced the outline of the knife that lay on it.

“It seems to me,” she said thoughtfully, “that I already have helped you. I helped your captain here get some lead back in his pencil, ain’t that so, Chillgrave?”

Barry looked at Alura and Janet, and then nodded.

“That be so, Admiral Galeflint,” he said.

“Right. And you all know that hackneyed old saying, don’t you? One good turn deserves another. So, just so as we’re on an even keel in this fancy little friendship that we seem to have struck up, it’d rather nice if you were to give me some help in return.”

“And then, once we’re even, you’ll join with us and our cause?” Janet asked, wiping bagel crumbs from her mouth with the back of her hand.

“I’ll have a fucking good think about it, matey, how about that?” Isobel said noncommittedly.

“And you can tell us where the Stronghold might be.”

“Mayhaps,” Isobel said with a note of finality.

It didn’t seem as if we had any other option, as far as I could see.

“What is it you need our help with?” I asked.

Isobel leaned back in her chair and folded her hands in her lap.

“It’s pretty simple, really,” she said.

“Why don’t you just do it yourself, then?” Janet interjected. “Or get some of your goons to do it?”

Isobel smiled a shark’s smile at Janet. “I like you. You have sand. Grit. A spikiness that must be your father shining through you, if half the stories I hear about that man are true. You remind me of me.”

“I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or an insult,” Janet said, taking another bite of bagel.

“A bit of both,” Isobel said. “And the reason that I’m not going to do this myself or use any of my crews to do it is a simple one: you four owe me now. So why would I not use that favor? If you die, then I have lost nothing.”

“Ah, so it’s one of those kinds of favors, is it?” Barry said.

“That’s right, Chillgrave,” Isobel replied evenly. “It’s one of those favors where you can use the newfound energy and vim that my Death Font has given you to square the debt you owe to me. What did you think I bloody well let you re-energize last night for? So that you could enjoy an extended vacation sailing about the Spectral Realm like some Manafell playboy? Not on your afterlife.”

“What is it you would have us do then, Admiral Galeflint?” Barry asked.

“There are a couple of highly experienced, highly fucking troublesome raiding ships that have been playing havoc with my smuggling operation, located near one of the isles not too far from here. I have already lost three ships of souls to these bastards and don’t really want to risk any more of those who are loyal to me—not when I have you, your ship, and your crew at my disposal, Chillgrave.”

“That’s a very sound and cold-blooded tactical move, Your Majesty,” Alura said.

“I know,” Isobel said sweetly.

“You want us to take care of these two raiding ships?” I asked.

“That’s right,” Isobel said. “Specifically, I want you four and all your shipmates waiting back at the port to take your schooner and act as bait.”

“Bait?” Alura asked, her coffee cup paused halfway to her lips.

“That’s right, Princess,” said Isobel with a sardonic twist to her lips. “These raiders are not fools, unfortunately. They will flee and fight another day if they see a collection of my ships coming into view. They have some sort of magical weapon on board that has enabled them to escape and destroy the ships that I have sent to deal with them. All I want you to do is to draw these raiders out from whatever cove they are laid up in, engage with them, and then send up a signal flare. Then, you’re to keep them occupied until I have a chance to send in my kraken.”

“Kraken?” I asked.

“What, you’ve never seen a kraken?” Isobel shot at me.

“Uh, no,” I replied.

“Well, if you manage not to get yourself killed today, you might just be in for a real treat,” the Pirate Queen said.

“And if we do this,” I said, “you’ll promise to give some serious thought to our request, that you join us and show us the way to the Twin Spirit’s Stronghold?”

Isobel sighed deeply, but I could tell there was a smile lurking just below the surface of her badass pirate facade.

“Do this,” she replied, “and we’ll call it even. Do this and you have my oath, such as it is, that my pirates will fight against the Arcane Council. And I’ll even show you the location of the Stronghold.”

There didn’t seem to be anything more to discuss. Coming from a pirate, I figured that was about as good a promise as we were likely to get.

“All right,” I said, “you have a deal.”

Isobel clapped her hands. “Excellent. Now, have a good feed and build your strength up. If you’re going to meet your makers today, whoever they might be, then you don’t want to do it on an empty stomach, do you?”

“Dying hungry would be the fucking worst,” Janet said sarcastically.

“That’s right,” Isobel Galeflint said. “When you’re done, I’ll have Meng, Caxton, and a few of my other most trusted crew escort you back to your ship. We don’t want you getting knifed before you even set sail now, do we?”

We breakfasted in relative silence after that cheery comment, each of us occupied with our own thoughts and plans on how best to survive whatever was coming up next.

When we got up to leave and follow Meng and Caxton around the side of Castle Goldskull, Isobel reached out as I walked by her and held me with a strong hand.

“Survive this, Justin Mauler,” she said in a low voice that dripped with double meaning, “and there will be booty of another kind waiting for you.”

I caught Barry’s eye as I walked away, and the poltergeist gave me a knowing look. He leaned in close to me and said in my ear, “You know what, sir, I rather think that she was referring to you getting to strike her panties and drop your anchor in her lagoon!”

I put my hand on the sky-pirate captain’s newly strengthened shoulder. “Glad to see that you’re back and as sharp as ever, Barry.”

Chapter 15

It was surprisingly easy in the end, finding the pair of raiding ships that had been annoying Isobel Galeflint. I say it was easy, but I was sure that it took more than a little knowhow and sailing skills on the part of Barry to give our schooner the appearance of a ship that, had it been a living creature, was limping.

We sailed for a couple of hours in the area designated by the Pirate Queen’s sailors before Barry did a few nifty things with the sails so that it looked like our ship had barely survived a tempest.

We cruised sadly and slowly around the tall headland of an island that was little more than sheer gray cliffs topped with dark, waving forest. Then, we popped out into the calm, sheltered waters beyond it. It was a small and desolate little isle, and there didn’t look like there was any spirit of any kind inhabiting the place.

“You see any signs of fishermen or anything like that around here with that expert eye of yours, Barry?” I asked as we cruised around the blunt headland. Above us, birds that might have been a spectral form of gull called to each other in forlorn voices.

“Not that I can see, sir,” Barry replied, his one eye swiveling this way and that as he guided us around the promontory.

“That’s something I haven’t been able to get my head around, Barry,” Janet said, speaking over her shoulder from where she stood against the portside rail.

“What would that be, miss?” Barry asked.

“Just, like, do you guys need to eat here?” Janet asked. “We’re talking of fishermen, and we had breakfast this morning, but aren’t you, you know, technically dead?”

Barry gave her a thin smile. “Argh, we be dead all right, Miss Thunderstone. No doubt of that.”

“Then surely you don’t need to eat,” Janet said.

“Not in the mortal world we don’t, no,” Barry said as he gave the steering wheel a slight adjustment. “But here, in the Spectral Realm, those that be ghosts in the world of the living are made flesh and blood, ye see? Here, we are as real as we ever were in Avalonia, susceptible to pass on just like mortals are if we are killed or starved. Though it takes some potent magic to destroy a phantom or poltergeist in the mortal world, it is all too easy to kill us here and send us down the river to…”

“To where?” Alura asked, interest coloring her words.

Barry shrugged. “We be gettin’ into murky waters there, miss. That question is for the theologians, philosophers, and other hairy, unkempt folk who haven’t ever thought of getting real jobs. I am naught but a simple sailor, miss.”

We might have gone a little deeper into those murky waters, but we had rounded the cape and found ourselves at the edge of a huge, calm bay.

It was a great shallow wine glass shape this cove, the promontory we had just rounded on one side and a matching one a few miles distant on the other. A neat half-moon of white sandy beach lay off to our right, which was bisected by a river that issued out of an enormous cave in the cliff wall. The cave was easily big enough and wide enough for a full-blown galleon to sail in and out of, and my initial thought was that here was where the raiders had been hiding.

This belief was quickly backed up by the fact that two ships, of roughly equal if not slightly larger size than our own, were sailing out to meet us.

“They must have had lookouts up on the headland,” Barry muttered to us. “The raiders are already underway, as ye can see.”

“What do we do now?” Alura asked, watching the two ships heading toward us with the single-minded intent of a couple of wolves descending on a stricken sheep.

“Shoot the flare?” Cecilia suggested.

“That’d be good,” I said.

“Why don’t I do it?” Enwyn said with a grin that only a pyromaniac could muster. “I’ll add a little extra punch that’ll ensure the Pirate Queen’s fleet can’t miss it.”

Enwyn snatched the flare from Barry and then let loose. It shot into the air and expanded into a mushroom cloud of many colors.

“Nice,” Janet said as she clapped Enwyn on the back.

“What do we do in the meantime?” Cecilia asked. “Those two vessels aren’t simply going to wait while the Queen’s fleet comes to rescue us.”

“Now,” I said, looking at Barry, “we fight.”

I conjured the staff of the Twin Spirits to my hand. That went someway to settling any nerves that I might have had.

I watched as the two ships moved in closer and began pairing off so that they could come at us from different directions. The enemy crews scrambled over the rigging and up the shrouds. The glint of metal was much in evidence, and I spotted more than a few mana muskets in the hands of some of our foes.

Now that we had found our targets, Barry quickly righted whatever he had wronged on our ship so that the schooner regained the maneuverability that it had always had.

“All sailors away from the rails!” Barry roared in his commanding voice. “Shields are comin’ up!”

There was a flicker of greenish blue light, and a ripple of magical energy swept up the mainsail and then popped over the schooner like a half-visible cloak. The layer of defensive magic dropped down almost flush with the railings and keel and disappeared into the water.

“Man the mana-cannons!” Captain Chillgrave bellowed. “Prepare to unleash a broadside!”

Our crew scrambled to obey, men and women of the resistance as getting into the gunner seats of the cannons.

For three boats that weren’t really moving all that fast, it only seemed like a few seconds before the enemy vessels were drawing alongside us.

“Hold… Hold… Hold…” I could hear Barry murmuring to himself. I was standing on the poop deck beside him, along with Alura, Janet, Cecilia, and Enwyn.

“Hold… Hold… FIRE!” the poltergeist shouted as the enemy ships drew abreast of us.

As one, the basilisk-shaped mana-cannons along our port side roared in unison. The magical equivalent of gunpowder smoke filled the air, great confusing, rolling clouds of light blue mist. Manaballs smashed into the flank of the attacking ship, sending up splinters of exploding wood in some places. In other places, I was amazed to see, there was hardly any damage at all. The manaballs hit the side of the ship and simply stopped dead, falling into the sea below with dull sizzling noises.

“What the hell?” I yelled, pointing at the useless balls of sorcery as they stopped like bullets thwarted by a sandbag and dropped into the ocean.

“Nothing to worry about, sir,” Barry said over the belching din of the mana-cannons. “Nothing to worry about! They’re simply the defenses at work. We’ll have to wear ‘em down if we want to cause them any damage.”

Our conversation was curtailed by the enemy ship firing its own cannons. The noise was astounding, even if we were sitting in the middle of a wide-open bay.

Manaballs of scintillating, fizzling pink light hit our schooner from point blank range. I found myself tensing up involuntarily, preparing to see absolute carnage on the deck below me.

However, I needn’t have feared. The raiding ship’s missiles punched into the invisible shield that coated our vessel with about as much effect as a custard pie thrown by a clown might have caused. The pink manaballs sent shudders through the hull, but not a single member of our crew was injured and not a single splinter of wood was dislodged from even one timber.

“Fire at will!” Barry crowed with delight.

The mouths of the basilisk mana-cannons sent forth their deadly barrage once more. Our adversary’s ship lurched a little in the water as our shots punched into it once more. There were a few screams this time, barely discernible through the noisy mist. I saw the flash of answering pink mana muskets from the deck and ducked as the stern lantern just behind me was blown to smithereens.

“How can the musket fire get through the shield wall?” I asked Barry.

“The defenses are only really effective against heavy magical artillery fire, sir,” Barry explained. “Any smaller spells or magic will slip through the hex-netting.”

I pointed my staff at where I thought the deck of the other ship might be through all the blue and pink mana-cannon mist and fired off a Storm Bolt. My spell flashed away into the murk, and there was a winking spark of a detonation as it hit.

Answering fire came from our starboard side. Then, there was an unexpected crashing crescendo of sound. The other ship had got around us and had let loose with a broadside of its own. Once more, the defenses held.

And then it was mayhem. There was noise—fucking lots of it. The whole world turned into a roaring mess of screaming and shouting and explosions. There was the dull thud of manaballs fruitlessly striking the sides of the ships, the whirr of flying splinters as occasionally one of our cannon shots got through a chink in the armor of our foes’ vessels, the rending tear of wood torn apart, the rib-jangling rhythm of the guns, and the whizzing hiss of mana rounds and spells whisking overhead and all around.

It was one of the most intense battles that I had ever been in. Mostly because our schooner was the meat in a cannon sandwich. We were being pounded from both sides by the enemy ships, occasionally getting a breather as we passed by one before circling around again.

The sea battle itself was taking place in the bay, in a very localized area of water. Barry was adhering to the instructions that Isobel Galeflint had given us and making sure that we kept our enemies in as single a spot as we could.

Barry had a mana pistol in each hand and looked to be having the time of his life. He fired off a series of shots that ripped along one of the yardarms of the ship on our starboard side, causing an enemy sailor to sprint along the beam. Barry’s final shot caught the unfortunate elvish woman in the leg and sent her screaming to the deck below where she splattered against the wood.

The raider that I had been watching tried to swing across from his ship to ours on a boarding rope. He emerged out of the swirling mist, his cutlass clenched in his teeth. I reached down, picked up a broken piece of wood, and smacked the handle of the cutlass as hard as I could just as the man’s feet touched down on our deck. The blade swiveled around and cut the top of the sailor’s head clean off.

Another raider swung across on another rope, screaming a battle cry. As he swung over the poop deck, his eyes fixed on Enwyn, I reached out, touched him with my staff, and used my Crystallize spell to turn him into a glistening block of crystal. Frozen solid, he swung back out into space, and Enwyn used a fire spell to sever the rope. The sailor dropped into the sea and sank without trace.

“Time for a little bit of improvisation,” I said.

I ran down the stairs that separated the poop deck from the main deck. I vaulted a basilisk mana-cannon as it was blown off its mount by an enemy shot that appeared to have penetrated Barry’s defenses, dashed past a dwarf who was bleeding from the head, and then started to climb up the rigging.

I needed a better view of the unfolding battle, which meant getting up into the crow’s nest. Barry, while we had been sailing toward this bay, had given me a brief rundown on the history of the crow’s nest. It had been one that the girls had found boring to the point of tears, but I had found strangely illuminating.

Apparently, the crow had been an essential part of the early Avalonian sailors’ navigation equipment. They were, according to Barry, land-lubbing fowl that were carried on board to help the navigator determine where the closest land lay when the weather was so bad that it prevented sighting the shore visually. In cases of shitty visibility, a crow was released and the dude steering the boat plotted a course that corresponded with the bird's because it invariably headed straight toward land, which is where the expression ‘as the crow flies’ had come from.

I reached the small, enclosed platform in which the sentry should have been standing, only to find the bloody lower legs of whatever poor bastard had been stationed up there.

“Not confidence inspiring,” I muttered. I pushed the image from my mind and the sentry’s legs over the edge of the crow’s nest, and then held up my staff. What I was about to do was something that I couldn’t recall having tried before.

I was going to attempt to infuse one of my spells with another.

I had a brief look at the mass destruction taking place below me, across the decks of the three ships engaged in the bloody battle.

There might have been two of the enemy ships, but Barry’s schematics were clearly superior to whatever it was that the other captains were packing. What was more, now that Barry was all juiced up, he was a force to be reckoned with in himself. I could see the little bastard zipping around the deck, fending off raiders as they tried to board our ship from both sides, firing off spells, strengthening defenses, and cutting spectral sailors down with whatever edged weapon happened to be at hand.

Tearing my eyes away from a withering hail of mana musket fire that had just ripped out from the center of our deck and scythed down a few of the enemy, I turned my attention to the boat on our port side.

I raised my staff and conjured Rain of Toads.

The magically conjured amphibians fell like a slimy, fat hail down upon the deck of my targeted ship. As soon as I caught sight of the first freefalling toad, I then altered the spell in mind so that it was blended with my Leech spell.

The falling toads took on a gruesome, sickly green light. As they fell on the opposition crew, the little toads sapped the energy from the sailors they came in contact with and gave it to me.

This was precisely what I needed; extra mana power with which I could help fight off our enemies. I wasn’t sure how long it was going to take Isobel to arrive with her kraken, but I knew that every enemy raider that I could take down or immobilize would be one less that might end up hurting Janet, Alura, Cecilia, Enwyn, or one of our crew.

As bewildered havoc began to spread across the decks of the port side ship, I turned my attention to the vessel that had just hove up alongside the starboard side. Even as I watched, they loosed a broadside at our schooner and, this time, more than one of the pink manaballs penetrated.

Solid planks of inch-thick timber were ripped up from the decking near the bow and sent spinning up into the air. One of my fellow rebels shrieked horribly and went up in a blaze of sticky fuchsia-colored fire. They attempted to throw themselves overboard and douse the fire in the sea, but whatever magic powered the enemy manaballs it wouldn’t let sea water quench the supernatural fire. The rebel squirmed and thrashed in the water for a few seconds before she was completely consumed by the cotton candy-colored flames.

The sight of that pissed me off no end.

With the image of the burning rebel still seared into my mind’s eye, I unleashed the Amber Dragon that I had captured during the subterranean War Mage Exhibition match.

The mana drain was great, not just on me but on the dragon itself. I would only have the massive mythical creature on my side for a limited time, and I would need to use the dragon to its full potential before recalling it back to the orb. Luckily, the mana drain on myself was offset by the extra mana that I had taken on through my Leech spell-imbued toads.

My plan was simply to have the Amber Dragon smash at least one of the enemy ships to kindling. That had been the plan. Level the playing field with a dragon so that our schooner was only getting its ass kicked from one side—that was easy enough, right?

Wrong.

As with most plans, this one was instantly given a ruthless revision by Nature, or Fate, or whatever the hell else I might have preferred to call the ironic powers behind the Multiverse’s grand scheme.

The damned Amber Dragon, my fucking hoped-for White Knight, had only popped into existence and wheeled around in the sky for perhaps fifteen seconds before a blazing haze of purple light rose from the ship I had designated for destruction first.

“Ah, that’s not going to be good,” I said to the sky.

It wasn’t.

Another dragon burst into being, with a sound that made me think that the very air was being blasted and torn apart.

It was a big fucker, not quite as massive as the Amber Dragon, but still plenty large enough to cause our ship some real problems. It was wreathed in pale green, with skin that was more shadow than actual tissue, even here in the Spectral Realm. I could see its skeleton glowing through its ghostly scales like a radioactive art installation.

The ancient Amber Dragon only had time enough to engulf the bow of the ship, along with a handful of enemy sailors, in glutinous molten amber before the phantom dragon flew up and into it.

From where I stood, up in the crow’s nest, I was almost on a level with the two dragons when they collided in mid-air. The impact of the two gigantic bodies coming together was like a hammer blow, the wash of air hitting me in the chest and sending me staggering back into the rickety railing.

As their great bulks tumbled and twisted in the air as they slashed and snapped at one another, all I could do was watch with my bottom jaw hanging open. It was only when the ghost dragon’s tail whipped downward and batted one of our unlucky rebels off the deck of our ship and into the foremast of an enemy vessel with enough force to rip his arms off, that I came back to myself.

For the time being, as the two titanic beasts went at one another, I wasn’t sure how I was meant to help. Then I had an idea. I could at least hamper one of the enemy captains by reducing the maneuverability of their ship.

I raised my staff and pointed it at the vessel that I had previously afflicted with the toad rain and summoned a low Meteor Shower. I pictured the rain of flaming, deadly asteroids coming in only a little higher than the top sails and, thankfully, this is what happened.

The blazing meteors, smaller than was probably usual if I had unleashed the spell with more mana, punched down and made Swiss cheese of the ship’s sails. Weakened as they had been by my rain of mana-leeching amphibians, the sailors did not have the energy necessary to douse the fires that sprang up all over the ship. They hastily tried to do what they could do to stop the damage, but with our crew firing spells at them, they were finding it increasingly difficult to fight on two fronts.

An ear-splitting scream made me twist around, the smile of satisfaction that had adorned my face disappearing.

My Amber Dragon was getting the worst of the brawl, despite its size. In fact, its size was what seemed to be letting it down as the ghost dragon was smaller and nimbler.

My Amber Dragon’s wings looked a little like the sails of the ship I had just hit with the meteors; they were tattered and scarred. They were struggling to hold the creature up.

“Shit,” I hissed, racking my brain for something that might keep the dragon in action and prevent it from succumbing to a watery grave.

For once, and to my frustration, my brain drew a blank. There was no way that I could see to save my dragon and keep it in the fight. I was not one of those assholes who would see something give its life just to appease my pride.

I raised the summoning orb and drew the Amber Dragon back to safety, just as the phantasmic dragon attempted to rake its amber eyes with a set of five-foot long glowing claws.

The ghostly dragon did not rest on its laurels for long. Flapping its pale green and black wings, it turned so that it was facing our ship. Its eyes alighted on the scurrying multitude of the rebel crew below it. Those massive orbs flashed a highly worrying shade of emerald, like a fat kid that has just spied an unattended pie sitting on a windowsill.

The dragon dived.

I raised my staff, pointed at the phantom dragon and sought desperately for a spell.

Time slowed so that each second felt like ten.

Then, the ocean erupted in a tangled mass of venomous purple tentacles.

“What in the name of all that is fucked up…?” I gasped.

The writhing limbs must have each been almost as wide around as the main mast of our schooner. They shot up out of the once placid, now churning, waters on either side of the enemy vessel that sat on our schooner’s port side and wrapped themselves around the dragon with terrifying speed and accuracy.

One second, the phantasmic dragon had been hurtling toward our schooner, the next it was arrested in mid-air. The tentacles, after halting the dragon in mid-dive, tensed and then twisted in a jerking motion. There was a truly horrific sound as a spine as long as a bus, made up of vertebrae each as big as an air-conditioning unit, was twisted and broken. The magical dragon spasmed, but before it could fade into the ether from whence it had come, the tentacles hauled downward and smashed it through the enemy ship.

The dragon disappeared beneath the surface of the frothing sea. The ship folded in half like a toy made of popsicle sticks.

Sailors were flung screaming through the air. Many were snatched out of the sky before they could land and pulled down under the waves to meet whatever awful fate awaited them at the many hands of the kraken.

In less time than it took for me to lower my staff, one of the enemy ships had vanished. All that was left was a bunch of floating wooden detritus on the surface of the churning sea.

Slowly, my head turned.

I almost, almost, felt sorry for the clueless raiders still firing cannons and muskets from the deck of the remaining enemy ship. The poor suckers had absolutely no idea what was about to—

The kraken surfaced on the far side of the enemy ship and, from my high vantage point, I saw one of the most hideous creatures I had ever seen.

The Abomination still probably had it beat in terms of grotesqueness, but when it came down to a sheer, ghastly, death incarnate, predatory alien vibe, the kraken was hard to beat.

It was, essentially, a giant cephalopod, with the creepy soulless but eerily intelligent eyes that cuttlefish and octopuses have. Its mouth was grinding beak filled with spines. It stank like… like… like a fucking plastic bag filled with rotten fish and the crap that a grizzly bear takes after its been hibernating for six months that’s been left in the trunk of a hot car for a week. It was a smell that defied description, a smell that actually made me gag and almost lose my breakfast onto the poor bastards below. As it emerged, to just above the surface of the water, it let loose a chittering rumble that I knew would haunt my nightmares.

With a casual strength that eclipsed the might of any organic, flesh and blood creature, the kraken simply flipped the thousand-ton ship into its disgusting maw and ground it to bloody splinters.

And then…

It was gone.

Nothing remained of the two raiding ships but a little flotsam and a few severed limbs floating on the surface of the sea, which was calm once more. Silence assaulted my ears, louder somehow than the cannons had been.

I looked down at the stunned rebels below me. A few of the braver—or more dazed ones—had wandered over to the railings and were peering down into the water.

I let out a great whooshing breath and spat the smell of the kraken out into the air.

“Just when you thought it was safe to get back in the water,” I whispered to myself.

As I made my way down from the crow’s nest, careful not to fall off the rigging and into the sea, I saw another ship sail around the headland.

If the blood red sails weren’t enough of a clue as to who the glamorous galleon belonged to, the woman with the flying red hair standing on the bowsprit, steadying herself with one hand, was a dead giveaway.

Admiral Isobel Galeflint, the Pirate Queen, had arrived on the scene.

Chapter 16

The Pirate Queen’s ship slid gracefully into the bay like a leviathan, like a behemoth of the deep, like a giant cruising shark. Behind her a couple of other ships, dwarfed by the gargantuan galleon, followed as an entourage. Along the side of the hull of her red-sailed galleon the words, THE HELLBRINGER.

Dangling from one hand and looking as easily balanced on the bowsprit as she might have been standing on a sidewalk, the Pirate Queen swung around and then trotted along the thin, jutting spar and back onto the main deck of her mammoth ship.

By the time that I was standing back on the poop deck of our schooner, The Hellbringer had come alongside us and lines had been cast across to pull us to her.

Before we completely secured, Meng, who I was beginning to see was probably Isobel Galeflint’s right hand woman, had swung across on a rope and landed with the grace of a cat on our deck. Without paying attention to the few exhausted rebels that half-brandished swords at her, she strode up the deck toward Barry, Janet, Alura, Enwyn, Cecilia, and me.

“Nice of you guys to join us,” I said.

Meng apparently wasn’t in the bantering mood. She slouched up to me, hooked her thumbs into her belt, and tipped her head to one side.

“Admiral Galeflint wants to see ya,” she said.

“Is she going to tell us off for making a mess of her ocean?” I quipped. “Because if she is, I’d like to point out that it was her pet that caused all the damage.”

“Quite some pet, ain’t it?” Meng said casually, fixing me with her beady eyes. “Now, hurry the fuck along, there’s a good lad. You don’t want to keep the Admiral waiting.”

I made to follow Meng. Janet, Alura, Enwyn, Cecilia, and Barry fell in behind me. Meng, looking over her shoulder as she led the way back down the stairs of the poop, held up a hand.

“Nah, mateys,” she said. “Admiral Galeflint just wants to see Mauler. None of you others. You lot stay here, aye. Especially not you liveuns.” She gestured at Enwyn and Cecilia. “Never seen your faces before, so I don’t trust you. Barely trust the other liveuns.”

I exchanged glances with my women. None of them looked particularly comfortable with me scaling the rope ladder that hung from the towering side of the galleon next to us.

“It’ll be fine,” Barry said soothingly to them. “Galeflint won’t harm Justin here, not after how we have held up our end of the bargain. I hope not anyway,” he added.

I gave the poltergeist pirate a sarcastic thumbs-up.

“Thanks for the confidence-boosting pep talk, Barry,” I said and followed Meng toward the rope ladders.

A short while later and I was standing on the far bigger, far grander deck of The Hellbringer. Isobel Galeflint was standing up on top of the taffrail, heedless of the dizzy drop to the ocean below. She was surveying the floating wreckage that bobbed in the gentle heave and swell, at the tatters of sail cloth and splinters of woods that was all that was left of two ships.

After a few moments, she turned to me and sighed.

“I do so love to see a job done right,” she said. “Nothing like when a half-cocked plan delivers the goods, eh?”

“Half-cocked?” I asked.

“Aye, half-cocked,” the Pirate Queen repeated. “In all honesty, I wasn’t expecting any of you and your mates to survive that little encounter, Mr. Mauler. Especially after you summoned a damn dragon. Don’t you know that there aren’t any dragons in the Spectral Realm? They get their own damned place after they pass. Summon a live one, and the Spectral Realm conjures up a dead one to take it down. It’s the balance of things.”

“Right,” I said. “I was wondering where that dragon came from.”

Isobel let out a sigh. “Seeing the damage and retribution that has been visited upon the raiders that have been such a pain in my ass these past few months, and knowing that you played your part, well… I won’t deny, it gives me a warm little glow just here.”

She rested a hand on her bare navel and stroked a finger across the flat planes of her stomach. I tried not to stare but failed completely.

“I’m surprised and impressed,” Isobel went on, her gray eyes boring intently into mine. “The sight of all this destruction has kindled my sense of adventure once more. It has been too long since she I’ve been out on the high seas myself. I forgot how invigorating all the blood and carnage and death can be.”

I think she might be getting off on this a little, I thought.

The woman still had her hand resting on her bare stomach, and it looked like her fingers were itching to go a little lower.

In an attempt to steer the Pirate Queen’s mind back to business, I said, “So, now that we’ve gotten rid of these pesky raiders, how do you feel about—”

Isobel cut me off with a sharp gesture and then motioned me to follow her. Swallowing a rising impatience, and contenting myself to enjoy the view of her sexy, swaying, leather-clad ass walking ahead of me, I followed her.

We ended up below the poop deck, in the part of the stern that I guessed was reserved for Isobel and those minions who held the highest positions onboard the ship. It was nicely furnished in here, with lots of windows. It looked a little bit like a suite in a fancy Renaissance-era apartment.

“Someone arrived at Cupido Island, just after you had set off with Chillgrave,” Isobel said, her face giving nothing away. “Meng and Caxton heard her asking after a man who fitted your description just as we were about to cast off and come after you. They brought her to see me—with no little difficulty, I might add. She hexed four of my men into the waters of the port and made them shark bait with as little trouble as if they had been a bunch of schoolgirls.”

“Who was it?” I asked. “And what did they want?”

“She said that she was looking for you,” Isobel said. “I told her that, as it happened, I was just off to meet you. So she tagged along.”

Isobel pushed open a door, revealing an elegant parlor beyond. Comfy couches, oil paintings, and dark wood decorated the small space. Sitting in a wingback armchair of pink suede and gazing out at the sea was none other than Mallory Entwistle.

“Mallory!” I said, striding over to her. “What the hell are you doing here? I got a missive from Chaosbane saying that you disappeared off somewhere.”

Mallory rose to her feet and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Well met, Justin,” she said, laying a small smile on me. Then she turned to contemplate Isobel who stood behind my right shoulder.

I waved a hand at her when I saw her hesitation at saying anything in front of the Pirate Queen.

“Don’t worry about Isobel here,” I said. “She’s a fucking maddog, but a trustworthy one for all her reputation. She and I, I think, have an understanding now. Don’t we, Isobel?”

I thought it was more the casual way that I spoke, rather than the words that I said, that made Mallory and Isobel relax.

“Aye, we’ve an understanding,” said Isobel.

“See,” I said. “Now, Mallory, tell me where the hell you’ve been. Spare no detail. I feel that Isobel here is not too far off joining our little rebel cause.”

Isobel snorted, but she did not disagree with me, which I thought was very promising.

“Well, I suppose that my tale will make a fairly short account,” Mallory said. “Even though I have spent the past twenty-four hours on tenterhooks and only one slip up from a long bout of torture followed by a short execution, the retelling of what I have been doing might not sound like much.”

“I guess we’ll be the judge o’ that,” said Isobel.

Mallory gave her a level look. “Now that I think about it, it is probably best that you hear this too, Admiral Galeflint.”

“You’ve been off on a solo mission?” I prompted.

“Yes,” Mallory said.

“Doing what?” I asked.

“Yes, doing fucking what?” Isobel growled.

“I crossed back through the rift, back to Avalonia,” Mallory told us.

“What? Why?” I asked. “Wasn’t that a bit risky? The Arcane Council must be swarming the Chaosbane Ranch and searching every haunt that the Chaosbanes, and we, have ever used.”

“They are,” Mallory confirmed. “I can tell you that in no uncertain terms, for I was spying on the Castle of Ascension.”

Isobel let out a low and impressed whistle. “Ballsy.”

Mallory made no comment on the bravery she had shown, but said, “I couldn’t get really close, not with the amount of mages on the lookout for spies and saboteurs, but I got close enough to see that there was definitely a lot of movement. More movement than I would have thought the mustering of search parties would account for. It looked more like a weapon-take to me—a gathering of troops. Although all the companies of soldiers seemed to be mustering or being moved inside the castle, which I thought was peculiar.”

In truth, there was little I could make of this information, not having any idea what the modus operandi for going rebel hunting was.

Isobel Galeflint, though, was up on her feet and striding agitatedly around the room. She looked excited, but there was something else too, some tension that I recognized but could not put my finger on.

“So, it’s true,” she said in a low voice. “Everything you’ve said about the growing dissent between you rebels and the Arcane Council…”

“Well, yeah, I wasn’t exactly making a big deal of it for the fun of it,” I said, managing to keep the exasperation in my voice to a bare minimum.

Isobel looked up with fever-bright eyes. Her mouth was half open, and she ran her tongue over her bottom lip, moistening it. She looked highly strung right then.

She walked over to a door and grasped the ornate brass handle. “This is cause for a celebration, or a drink at least.”

I thought of the terrible slaughter that I had just witnessed and remembered the crazy sight of the kraken swallowing that ship whole, along with the entire crew.

“I could go for a drink or any sort of distraction,” I said.

The Pirate Queen eyed the two of us, a calculating and slightly thirsty expression on her face.

“Just give me a second to compose myself, to marshal my thoughts,” Isobel said. “Come in when I call.” She added this last instruction in a voice that was used to being obeyed without question.

I could see that she looked excited, could see the flush in her cheeks and the sparkle in her eye. Obviously, all this talk of marshaling forces and the Arcane Council, of building armies, and life and death battles was like a red flag to a bull, as far as the Pirate Queen was concerned.

Isobel Galeflint wrenched open the door to what I assumed was her captain’s cabin, walked through, and slammed it behind her.

Mallory and I exchanged glances.

“What is it that she wants with us?” Mallory asked in a low voice.

From inside the captain’s cabin, we could hear the occasional dull thud and, inexplicably, the odd jingling sound.

I shook my head and raised an eyebrow. “Honestly, I have no idea. Even though I’ve only known her a couple of days, she hasn’t struck me as nuts, you know? Ruthless? Yes. Power-hungry? Unquestionably. But hanging from the chandeliers bat-shit coo-coo bananas crazy? Nope. Not at all.”

There was a creaking, another bit of jingling and then Isobel’s voice called out, “All right, get in here, you two! Now!”

Mallory and I entered the room, and I closed the door behind us.

I swallowed, my mouth having gone dry.

“It’s not a drink,” I managed to croak.

“But it is quite the distraction,” Mallory finished.

Chapter 17

Admiral Isobel Galeflint had undergone quite the transformation, and, in my opinion, it was one that suited her down to the ground.

Running my gaze over her suddenly very, very exposed body. Looking at her silky legs, heaving chest, and bared ass cheeks, I realized that she had undergone quite a dramatic wardrobe change too.

I mean, the first thing that I noticed, that anyone would observe, was the lack of pants. Gone were the short leather hot pants that she had worn above her high leather pirate boots. Gone, as well, were the leather pirate boots. She was now attired in thigh-high boots made of from a shiny PVC-like material and, above them, some sort of mesh and net body suit with a leather bra and panties—the panties and cups of the bra each having a full length zip so that her lady bits could be accessed should it be desired.

For the sake of keeping one last vestige of her authority, or so I thought, she was still wearing her leather and brocade admiral’s jacket, open, over the top.

What truly caught my attention, even more than the insanely hot outfit, was that Isobel was sitting in what I instantly recognized as a sex-swing.

I had never had the opportunity to use one of the contraptions myself, but I knew what it was. It was hanging from a ceiling beam, in a pool of light shining through the lead lined windows at the rear of the luxuriously appointed captain’s cabin.

It was basically a harness, made from leather, and fixed together with a series of metal rings. It supported and cradled the person sitting in it like the supple skeleton of a chair, but with none of the bits of a chair that might get in the way when…

Mallory made a little noise in her throat, something between a gasp of surprise and a swift groan of amorous interest.

I had to say, I was with her. Of all the things that I thought we might have been about to walk in on, this had not even made the top ten in the list of possibilities.

“Admiral Galeflint,” Mallory Entwistle said, taking a tentative step forward, “you seem to be in some sort of trouble.”

“You two are going to be in fucking trouble if you don’t get over here,” Isobel retorted, grinning her wicked grin. “As your admiral, and as someone whom you owe for saving your life with my kraken, I demand that the pair of you and me get it on, or the two of you might just find yourselves both hanging from the yardarm for insubordination.”

Mallory and I looked at one another. Personally, I didn’t think Isobel was being too serious, but it was always better to play it safe than sorry...

Isobel struggled in a theatrical fashion, like a Bond girl who had been tied to a slowly descending stake in the middle of a piranha pool. Her hands were tied above, her thin wrists stuck loosely through loops in the ropes that attached the sex-swing to the beam. Her legs were splayed out in front of her like the hands of a clock pointing to ten and two, kept spread by a thin metal bar that was cuffed to each ankle, making it impossible for her to close them.

I caught myself thinking that, had this kinky little set-up been hanging in my bedroom of the fraternity house, I would’ve been more than a bit excited about the prospect of being a part of it. Dangling as it was in the captain’s cabin of a ship that would have made the Queen Anne’s Revenge look like a rowboat, with a sexy half-naked female pirate strapped into it… Yeah, that was a lot cooler.

“Are you going to stand there goggling like a cod that’s just been pulled from the sea, or are you going to secure the prisoner?” Isobel hissed at us.

Mallory stepped forward and tightened the cords around the Pirate Queen’s wrists so that she was well and truly fixed.

Isobel struggled in her restraints again, testing her bindings, the muscles in her toned stomach standing out as she heaved this way and that. All she succeeded in doing, though, was rocking the sex-swing—she didn’t spin or revolve, as the swing was secured by a strap to the floor.

“Ah, it’s good to see that someone can take an order around here,” the Pirate Queen said, her eyes flashing lustfully.

Mallory was attired in her usual plain white dress that reminded of some priestess or angel. She stepped out of Isobel’s line of vision and walked over to a small cabinet, the door of which was ajar. She pushed the door of the cabinet fully open and gave a little throaty chuckle of amused delight.

“Ah, and you’ve found the very stash of instruments that I was hoping you would,” Isobel said. “I was thinking to myself that you must have been either extremely lucky or extremely clever to sneak around behind the Arcane Council’s back in their very capital, right under their noses. I see now that it was most certainly the latter. You carry yourself like royalty and yet you have the fucking cunning and inquisitive mind that would make you one hell of a formidable pirate, should you ever the feel like heeding the call of the high spectral seas.”

The Holy Mage clapped her hands. She reached into the cabinet and ran her fingers along some things that I could not see from where I stood in front of the bound and supine figure of the Pirate Queen.

“That,” Mallory said in impeccably crisp and proper accent, but with an undercurrent running that might have been ardor, “is one of the loveliest offers that I have been made in quite some time. I’m not usually one for the violent and rough and tumble life, but I can be a sucker for flattery.”

“Well,” I said to Isobel, “you seem to know exactly how you want this to pan out. Can I ask what you have in mind? What’s with the dress-up? Do we have permission to freestyle with you?”

“I wanted to know if you could be trusted, Mr. Mauler,” Isobel said. “I wanted to know if you’d do what I asked without trying to fuck me, in the metaphorical sense. After witnessing you hold those two raiding boats at bay, and seeing who your allies are,” and here she cocked an eye over her shoulder at Mallory, who was still fingering objects in the cupboard, “I admit that I am impressed. Now, to seal our little friendship pact, I want to have some fun with you and this ethereal mate of yours. Would you mind terribly if we engaged in some—I’m not sure of the word you might use for it on Earth.”

“I think the term you’re looking for is BDSM,” I said.

“BDSM?” the Pirate Queen repeated. “And what would that stand for?”

“Bondage, discipline, domination, submission, sadism and masochism,” I said. “Does that sound about right?”

Isobel gave me a coy grin, one that must have set many a pragmatic heart to making foolish mistakes. “Oh yes, that sounds like something I could get my teeth into.”

“That’s what you want Mallory and I to be a part of with you?” I asked. “And you want us to give you a bit of tough love, is that it?”

“Yes and yes, I’ll happily have all three of us be a part of it. Anything short of putting bamboo under the fingernails is okay with me,” replied the squirming Isobel.

I puffed out my cheeks, feeling the tingle of excitement beginning to grow in the pit of my stomach. “Well, all right, then. Excellent. I mean, I’m sure that Mallory and I will be more than willing subjects if the alternative is us having to do the hemp fandango.”

I could see the wanton desire building and welling up from the depths of Isobel’s gray eyes. I knew that what was about to happen was going to be one for the fucking ages, personally speaking. I had never tried much bondage or anything like that, but that was not because I wasn’t interested in dipping a toe in the pool. It was simply because the opportunity had never presented itself.

As excited as I was, I also figured this was part of the test that I had to pass to ensure that I, and the rebel forces orchestrated by Reginald Chaosbane, secured the loyalty of Isobel Galeflint. I needed to leave her feeling like she had had the fuck of her life, if I wanted to make sure that she was on our side.

“You two have slept together before, yes?” the Pirate Queen asked as I slowly kicked off my boots.

“Actually,” I replied, looking at Mallory who was standing behind Isobel and starting to unfasten to clips of her white gown, “no, we haven’t quite gotten there yet. Have we, Mallory?”

With a magnificent disdainful shrug, Mallory shrugged her elegant shoulders and slipped out of her dress. The white material pooled around her feet like liquid starlight, and she stepped out of it.

“There are many things that benefit from taking time to resolve,” she said, bending down to pick up her dress.

Completely naked, she padded back over to the cabinet, put her gown over the back of a beautifully carved chair, and removed a paddle and whip from the cupboard.

I looked at Isobel Galeflint. I could see her ample breasts rising and falling with excitement, could see the tremor and flicker in her leg and arm muscles as she strained subconsciously against her bonds.

I figured that, under that that leather netted bikini type thing that she had on, her pussy was most likely already starting to moisten. Even as I watched, her chest rose and fell more deeply, her breath coming heavily as she waited to see what would happen next—and whether or not Mallory was going to be tentative in her ministrations.

For my part, I stepped over to where the Pirate Queen sat, legs spread, completely at mine and Mallory’s mercy.

“Justin, take this,” Mallory said, and she handed me the small horse whip. It was an innocuous-looking thing, but so were a lot of normal things until you put them to abnormal uses.

I walked around Isobel, examining her. As I circled her, I tapped her here and there with the small whip. It was wooden handled, with five or so thin, foot-long leather thongs coming out of it. I slapped it lazily across the Pirate Queens naked thighs, across her taut abdominals, eliciting soft gasps of pleasure from the bound woman. I traced the thongs up one boot, across the metal bar that kept her legs spread and down the other.

“Oh, I knew that you were one to watch, Justin Mauler,” Isobel said. “I knew I needed to keep my eye on you. The way that Barry defers to you on most decisions, the way that your female companions give you the glad eye… Oh, yes, you are a man to watch, no bloody mistake.”

Her inability to do anything due to her restraints was evidently becoming more and more of a frustration for Isobel Galeflint. She looked as if she longed for some physical contact, not this teasing, but I continued to walk around her.

As excited as I was to indulge in a little bit of the old kinbaku with Isobel, I was just as keen to bump uglies with Mallory Entwistle. The former priestess was a vision of pale beauty, standing naked in the light streaming through the cabin windows. The reflected light of the ocean dappled her bare skin and danced over her juicy tits, which were half hidden by the golden hair that fell down her shoulders.

“Touch me,” Isobel growled. “Do something to me. Anything.”

“You’re no admiral anymore,” I said, starting to rise to my role, as my cock rose in my pants. “You’re nothing more than a low-down, dirty bilge rat.”

I stopped at Isobel’s head and ran the handle of the whip around her lips. Obediently, the Pirate Queen opened her mouth, and I slipped the handle inside. Isobel, becoming more and more turned on by the second, started to run her tongue over the smooth handle and then to suck on it gently, all the while looking up at me standing over her.

“By the end of this,” Mallory said, coming to lean down behind Isobel, “you’re going to give us your solemn and unbreakable word that you’ll side with us against the Arcane Council.”

Isobel said nothing and continued to suck on the handle of the whip, but her eyes looked mischievously sideways at Mallory.

I removed the whip from her mouth, letting a thin string of spit fall across her naked breasts, and hit her softly across the chest with the leather thongs.

“Did you hear what your master Mallory said,” I asked in a hard voice.

Isobel, with slow deliberation, spat on the floor between my bare feet.

I struck her softly across the chest again.

“Did you damned well hear?” I asked again.

Isobel tried to spit between my feet again but, suddenly, Mallory’s deceptively strong hand was across her mouth, gagging her. Clutching the wooden paddle in one hand, the Holy Mage unzipped one of the leather cups on Isobel’s kinky bra and, seizing the erect, pink nipple that was suddenly exposed, gave it a sharp twist.

Isobel moaned through Mallory’s hand and closed her eyes. Mallory held the other woman’s nipple for a few seconds and then released. The electric current of pleasurable pain that looked to be passing through the bound pirate seemed to be shut off at the mains.

“Tell me you understand what the deal is here,” I said. “Tell me that you’ll swear fealty to our cause, against the Arcane Council.”

“No,” Isobel said, looking me square in the eye and hitting me with one of the most licentious smiles I’d ever seen outside of a porno.

“Fine,” I said, “then I guess Mallory and I will just have to enjoy ourselves without you for a little while. Mallory, come here, please.”

Mallory, still clutching the wooden spanking paddle, came over to stand next to me. She put one hand around my shoulder and, together, we gazed down at the helpless pirate.

As we ran our hungry gazes over her, I released the magic that held my clothes together. The morphing cloak that Igor had given me months before, and could transform into any outfit that I required, slipped from my shoulders. I was left standing naked as the day I was born, with a boner that I could have used in a prison camp to break rocks.

“Well, blow me down!” Isobel uttered softly, staring avidly at my spam javelin.

“Funny you should say that.” I turned to Mallory. “On your knees, please, and show Isobel here how it’s done.”

Without so much as a flicker of facial muscles, Mallory dropped to her knees, took my cock in hand, and slid the whole length of it slowly into her warm, wet mouth.

I let out an unfeigned sigh of contented ecstasy. My right hand grabbed a fistful of the soft golden hair and began to thrust my pole deeper into Mallory’s mouth.

I watched Isobel while Mallory sucked me off like a Dyson that had been hanging out with the wrong crowd and watching the wrong kind of movies. Her face was a picture of frustrated longing, her eyes feasting on the sight of Mallory giving me one of the all-time dirty blowjobs.

The Holy Mage, in juxtaposition of her wholesome outward appearance, was obviously loving playing the submissive slut to me. She was making little moaning sounds and gagged softly whenever the top of my schlong touched the back of her throat.

When my shaft was good and slick with Mallory’s saliva, I pulled it out of her mouth and lifted the blonde woman to her feet. I turned her around and pushed her forward. Mallory was forced to grab hold of the straps that held the sex swing to the cabin ceiling so that she didn’t fall over. Her heavy breasts hung down, right in front of the Pirate Queen, who was looking on with wide, lust-filled eyes.

Without warning, I spread Mallory’s tight ass, slid my prick into the tight confines of her sex, and began thrusting into her from behind. I made sure to lock eyes with Isobel while I started to fuck the other woman right in front of her, careful to keep a little smile on my face. That smile communicated to her that all she had to do was promise that she would help us out in our guerilla war with the Arcane Council and I would share the love with her.

“You fucking tease,” she said to me, her eyes shining with respect and longing. “You fucking pair of teases.”

Mallory was making happy little gasping noises as I thrust into her. She obviously hadn’t surrendered herself completely to her pleasure, though, because she reached out and freed the Pirate Queen’s other jug from the confines of the zip-up bra.

She twisted her other nipple this time, harder and slower than she had done before. Isobel lay her head back and twitched spasmodically as the current of lust looked to crackle through her, from her chest to her groin.

The interrogation continued in this way for a few more minutes—with me occasionally asking the same question in a quiet but commanding voice while I fucked the Holy Mage in her holy hole from behind.

Isobel refused to give me a definite answer and was punished with some harsh nipple play from Mallory. Both the left and right cups of the admiral’s saucy leather bra were open so that both her breasts were on show, and Mallory pinched and pulled mercilessly at the Pirate Queen’s traitorous nipples, which stood rock-hard and erect in the glare of the sunlight, until they were both red and angry.

“You will agree to our demands, Admiral Galeflint,” I said in a breathless matter-of-fact tone, through a fierce smile of contentment.

“You’re going to have to do a far better job than what you’re doing now,” Isobel mocked. “You bloody well call this bondage? This is what I get up to on my lazy days before I begin a fucking day of gardening!”

Mallory looked back at me, and her eyes glinted at the challenge.

Turning my attention back to Isobel, I realized that perhaps my best chance of finding some way to squeeze a verbal promise out of her was to get the woman so worked up that she let it slip somehow, just inadvertently pledged her allegiance to the cause. Of course, I wasn’t entirely sure how much weight her word would carry, especially not in this scenario and after hearing how little regard pirates had for the truth and promises, but I thought it was worth a shot.

“Come on, you two!” Isobel hissed at us, her big, liquid gray eyes taunting Mallory who was still leaning down in front of her. “You can do better than this, surely?”

In response, I pulled out of Mallory, moved her aside, reached down, and ripped down the zip of Isobel’s leather panties.

“That’s it! Maybe I’ll feel like talking after you’ve shown my pussy who’s boss. Come on!”

In a sudden burst of passion that creased her smooth and usually sanguine face, Mallory struck out with the paddle—not too hard, but hard enough to send a quiver of ecstasy through the Pirate Queen’s torso and down her legs, so that they shivered and shook. She struck her tight ass once more and then gently patted the paddle over the other woman’s naked, gaping sex. The wooden paddle slapped wetly across the lips of her pussy. Mallory reached out a long finger and tickled Isobel’s clit as she held up the paddle once more, raising her hand for another strike.

“Yes, that’s it! You want my word, do you? You want to know whether I’ll join your band of rapscallions? Well, fucking make me, then.”

Mallory struck her slightly harder this time, the paddle smacking down onto the naked flesh of her groin, just to the side of her box. Isobel gasped and bucked in the swing. Mallory, her face a mask of concentration, paddled the other woman again and again, progressively getting harder and harder.

Isobel, clearly loving this attention, thrashed in her bonds, moaning and crying out at the delicious pain, obviously trying desperately not to succumb to the building urge to cum, which looked to be rising in her like some all-encompassing hunger that needed to be sated.

“Tell me you’ll join us!” I growled and, this time, I struck down with the thong of the whip that I still held in my hand. The thin instrument slapped wetly onto Isobel’s slippery hole, and she cried out, her head craning forward as if she were trying to do a sit-up.

“Oh, gods,” she panted. To my eye, it looked like she was barely able to keep the rising tide of her orgasm at bay.

I smacked her on her inner thigh, then on the other. Averting her gaze from the arousing sight of her own reddening thighs and dripping vagina, Isobel turned her eyes to the thing that must have been taking up most of her vision: my massive erection that was pointing accusingly at her.

“You’re going to agree in the end, aren’t you?” I asked, my dominating persona slipping just a little in my eagerness to secure this woman’s help for Reginald Chaosbane and the rest of my friends.

“Make me,” Isobel replied, hoarsely. “Make me agree, Justin Mauler.”

“Oh, I will, if you insist” I said, in a voice as sure as a steel trap.

Thinking that I may as well play the part that Isobel Galeflint so badly wanted me to play, I slapped her pussy hard once more with the whip. As Isobel cried out, I reversed the instrument and plunged the handle into her slit. Isobel let out a long animal groan, and I started to fuck her hard and ruthlessly, thrusting away with the handle of the whip, which I had now effectively turned into a dildo.

Girl juice started to spurt from Isobel’s vagina as I pounded away with a single-minded determination. She screamed in rapture as her orgasm washed over and engulfed her, her head leaning off the back of the swing. Her legs trembled and her body sagged as she finished climaxing. Pussy juice dripped with a gentle tap-tap-tap onto the wooden floor.

Beside me, Mallory was stroking my shoulder and rubbing herself at the sight of the exhausted pirate.

“Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods,” the Pirate Queen moaned. “Please, get that fucking cock inside my mouth, and I’ll agree to anything at all. I’ll agree the fucking sea is yellow and the sky is green if that’s what you want. Just give it to me.”

I looked at Mallory questioningly. The Holy Mage nodded. Reaching down, she grabbed me roughly by the base of my shaft and pulled me forward until the tip of my pecker was pressed against Isobel’s face.

Isobel looked up at me and grinned.

“Fuck her, Justin,” Mallory said in my ear, “but let me have your seed.”

I kissed Mallory hard on the mouth and then, not giving the Pirate Queen a chance to compose herself or gather her thoughts, I shoved my dick roughly into her mouth.

She took it like a greedy champion of the cock-sucking art. I held her nose so that she had to breathe around my rod, causing her to snort and snuffle like a pig, and this only seemed to goad her on all the more.

While I did this, and while Isobel sucked me off like the keen pirate whore that she was, Mallory continued to slap lightly at the other woman’s sopping wet box, which was now quite red from the attention it had been receiving with the paddle.

Isobel grunted and groaned, gargling spit. Saliva dripped down her chin. In the midst of all this excitement and bondage debauchery, I noticed that Mallory was managing to edge herself closer and closer to an orgasm of her own. As she watched Isobel sucking on my pork sword, she was toying with herself, working her fingers so that her whole free hand was a blur.

I leaned over to her and she leaned into me and we kissed, our tongues engaging in a wrestling match that had nothing to do with our brains.

“Fuck me,” Isobel suddenly begged in between mouthfuls of dick. “Please, fuck me. And my allegiance is all yours.”

In reply, I pulled my cock from her mouth, walked around to her legs, and deftly unfastened the pole that stretched them apart. It fell to the floor with a clatter of metal on wood. Grabbing the harness of the sex-swing, I pulled Isobel to me and speared her with my shaft.

Isobel gasped with unadulterated pleasure as her punished, eager pussy was filled with my manhood.

It didn’t take long for her to shrug off the stupor of her post-climax bliss and get her head and body working toward a second orgasm. Her legs were free now, and she held them up of her own accord, the deeper to take my cock. I could feel my nuts slapping against her asshole, could feel the Pirate Queen’s girl cum dripping down to coat them as they made contact over and over again.

I started to pick up the pace. I had dropped the whip and the paddle was on the floor now, having been dropped by Mallory so that she could play with Isobel’s and my nipples. I was pounding away at Isobel’s sex now, completely unsheathing myself from her before plunging my prick hard into her.

“Pledge yourself to me,” I grunted on each thrust. “Pledge yourself to me, pledge yourself to us, come on.”

My breath rasped in my throat, and I felt myself on the verge of blowing my wad. Next to me, distantly through the thundering of the blood in my ears, I could Mallory saying, “Almost… there… yes!”

I pulled out of Isobel, turned, and blew my load all over Mallory’s stomach, just as the Holy Mage herself went weak at the knees and cried out in ecstasy.

A sudden blast of wind roared through the captain’s cabin, blowing all the windows open so that they swung crazily on their hinges. The sunlight seemed to flare, as if the gods had turned the dimmer of the heavens up a notch, just for a second.

I staggered and crashed into the desk, leaning against it and breathing heavily.

Through my narrowed eyelids, I saw Isobel lying exhausted in the sex swing. She was laughing throatily to herself.

“What’s so funny?” I asked, between heaving breaths as I felt my jacked heart rate begin to relax once more.

“Nothing, matey,” she said. “It’s just that I think we might have done the very best bit o’ negotiating I’ve ever been involved with.”

I looked down at my wilting pecker and over at the jizz-spattered Mallory.

I grinned. “Well, I try to drive a hard bargain.”

“A very, very hard bargain,” Isobel replied, with her tongue sticking out between her teeth.

* * *

Back on deck, fully clothed but still flushed of face, I stared out across the sea and let the wind run its cooling fingers over my face and through my hair. Mallory was standing next to me and humming to herself, her golden hair waving softly in the breeze.

Up on the poop deck, Isobel was organizing a series of trestle tables to be laid so that we could enjoy a bit of a celebratory feast: her, me, Alura, Janet, Enwyn, Cecilia Barry, and a few of her most trusted hands. Enwyn and Cecilia had been allowed on board the ship, seeing as Isobel had agreed to join us in our quest. Everyone else had been told there would be food and drink in plenty and that there’d be no labor for at least two hours when the meal bell rang.

I smiled to myself and shook my head for what felt like the twentieth time. There could be no denying, that had been one hell of a way to strengthen diplomatic relations.

I watched idly as sailors from Isobel’s three ships helped patch up the harm done to our schooner in the battle with the raiders, under the watchful eye of Captain Barry Chillgrave.

It looked like the damage had not been too extensive, but it was good to know that Barry was supervising repairs. If we ran into any more trouble, I wanted to make sure that we were as well defended as we had been before.

Speaking of well defended… I thought, reaching into my pocket and pulling out my spellbook from its depths. Let's see what that little bit of relationship strengthening did for my powers.

I flipped through the pages until I found what I sought. It was my newest spell, the ink still glistening freshly on the page.

Blessed Zephyr (Wind/Holy Spell) - Cast a Holy Wind over a group of allies, healing them of their minor wounds and bolstering their strength.

I snapped the book shut and replaced it in my pocket. That was a first—a healing spell. A spell that wasn’t just defensive, but actively helped heal and revitalize me and my friends.

With the looming threat of the Arcane Council hovering over us like a thunderhead, I figured that this addition to my spell arsenal could not have come at a better time. It was one thing to be able to make the lives of my enemies a living hell, but with full-on war rearing its head, the ability to potentially save the lives of the people that I had come to care about was a great tool to have.

A sudden clamor rose. It was the ringing of the bell that summoned everyone to the al fresco feast that Admiral Galeflint had laid on.

“Justin, Mallory,” Isobel called from above us, “get that rascal Chillgrave up here pronto, there is something I wish to tell you about these raiders. Something that I didn’t mention before, but which I think you will find quite interesting, especially after hearing the news that Mallory brought back from her spying out of the Castle of Ascension.”

Mallory swept toward the staircase that ascended to the poop, which was acting as the VIP room for the feast. I followed more slowly. Regardless of the light-hearted vibe that lay over the four ships after the battle that had been won, I had a feeling that there was more dark and dangerous work heading toward us.

“Ah well,” I said to myself as I took the first step up to the poop deck, “there might be a shit storm on the way, but that’s all the more reason to have a good meal and a couple of beers before it hits.”

Chapter 18

The board on Admiral Galeflint’s poop deck was laden with food and drink. Isobel sat at the head of the table with Meng on her right and the eel-faced bruiser, Caxton, on her left. I got the feeling that the Pirate Queen would have liked to have me within fondling range, or Mallory for that matter, but she was a shrewd enough leader of sailors to know that you didn’t offend those most loyal to you.

Barry and I sat across from one another, with Janet and Cecilia on my left and Alura and Enwyn on Barry’s left. At the far end of the table, sitting as upright and regal-looking as any queen, was Mallory.

“Pass the jellied clamaconda will you, Earthling?” Caxton grunted at me, indicating a bowl of slimy, shiny tubes that looked like they had already passed through someone’s digestive tract and out the other side.

I obliged, and the surly seaman muttered something that might have been thanks.

“Ooooh,” Meng said, her big wet eyes shining with mirth as she winked at me, “I think you’ve a shipmate in Caxton there, Mauler. Not often someone gets a word of gratitude out of that misery guts.”

“Go stick your head in the kraken’s mouth, wench,” Caxton replied to the selkie, spooning jellied clamacondas—whatever the fuck they were—onto his trencher bread.

“That’s a bit more like it,” Meng sneered, spearing a boiled crab with her knife and ripping a claw off it.

The banter put me at my ease. I couldn’t be entirely sure, but I suspected our efforts in the battle had won favor from Isobel’s followers. That was all to the good, as far as I was concerned. The happier they were, the harder they would fight for us.

The sound of champing jaws was all that could be heard for a few moments. Swallowing a chunk of hard cheese and washing it down with a mouthful of good wine, I addressed Isobel.

“You said that there was something you wish to tell us about these raiders,” I reminded her.

Isobel brushed off her hands and held up a finger while she finished chewing.

“Aye, that’s right,” she said. “Like I said, it’s especially relevant after hearing the news that your fine blonde shipmate brought back from her reconnoitering of the Castle of Ascension.”

Barry, who had been examining the silverware laid on the table with a connoisseur’s eye, looked up sharply at this.

“What’re ye talking about, Admiral?” he said.

“Stop flapping your lip and I’ll tell you, Chillgrave,” Isobel said, with a bite of her old impatience in her voice.

She turned back to me, carefully pulling a lobster’s leg off and sucking out the sweet white meat. Tossing the leg overboard, she said, “Them raiders that you and Chillgrave and these four fiery lasses helped me move onward into the next realm weren’t just stealing from me.”

“No?” I asked.

“No. They were also holding a key rift entry point that leads to Avalonia,” Isobel said, her eyes narrowing.

Barry dropped the heavy silver knife he had been holding. “A rift entry point?” he said quietly. “To Avalonia?”

Was it my imagination, or was there a tremor of something very much like dread or apprehension in his voice? The poltergeist was looking off the starboard side of the ship and studying the island and the bay in which we had just fought, as if he were only now seeing them for the first time.

“Aye, to Avalonia,” Admiral Galeflint said, snapping off another lobster leg. “It was a rift point which I wanted for my smuggling operation in order to expand it, and to make the moving of my contraband across the two realms all the easier.”

She sucked the meat out of the leg and tossed the exoskeleton away. “Specifically, I have wanted it for a long time because of its strategic importance in getting contraband in and out of the Avalonian capital, Manafell.”

I was listening to Isobel, but my eyes were glued on Barry. The golden aura that had surrounded the spectral sky-pirate ever since he had visited the Death Font had dimmed a little.

“Those scurvy, duck-kneed, dung-munching raiders had been holding it closed with magic in an attempt to cut off the Admiral’s profits,” growled Caxton, through a mouthful of the jellied clamacondas that he seemed to relish so much. “They’d been hoping that if they dried up her profits enough, then some of the newer, less loyal members of our crew might throw a little fuckin’ mutiny party.”

“Now that the bastards are dead, though,” Meng chipped in, “the final has been removed.” The selkie raised her goblet toward Barry Chillgrave. “They should have known better than to fuck with a returning legend, eh?”

Barry didn’t say anything. He was still looking out across the water of the bay, at the island and its mammoth cave mouth. There was a faint frown puckering his brow. He looked like a spirit frantically trying to sort through the filing cabinet of his extensive and jumbled memories.

“Aye, that they should have,” Isobel said, picking lobster meat out of her teeth with a knife that looked sharp enough to shave with. “O’ course, we didn’t tell them that Chillgrave was on his way, did we?”

Caxton and Meng chuckled darkly.

“Anyway,” the Pirate Queen continued nonchalantly, “I’ve already sent a couple of my most trusted sailors and trackers, and my most powerful mages, to open the rift and scout the opening to see what lies beyond and whether we can start smuggling as soon as possible.”

“You mean you’ve never actually made use of this here opening before?” Barry asked.

Isobel shook her head. “Nay, it only came to my attention a couple of moons ago, you know. A stranger was overheard in a bawdy house down on Black Spot Pier running his mouth about this place, how it was a surefire way into Manafell that the stupid hussy, Galeflint—yours truly—knew nothing about. It was fortunate that I have a set of ears and a set of eyes in every bottom of the barrel shithole on Cupido Island. After a little forceful persuasion, the fellow in question spilled the beans and I spilled his guts.”

“You tortured him?” Alura asked.

“Aye, I did,” Isobel said casually. “You can’t expect to lead a band of reprobates and not expect to get your hands bloody every once in a while, Your Majesty. It’s amazing what a chap will tell you when you strap a box of hungry panic crabs to his belly and they begin to dig around inside of him.”

Alura said nothing but pushed her plate of crab pointedly away from her.

The Pirate Queen grinned like one whose fun has gone well.

“These men, haven't they returned yet?” I asked.

A slight frown marred the Pirate Queen’s otherwise smooth complexion. She pushed some of her bright red, wavy hair back from her face.

“Not yet, no,” she said. “Though they sent a runner back, saying that they had successfully opened the rift and were heading on through. They reported that the rift had opened up onto some sort of—”

“Subterranean river,” Barry said.

The frown on the Pirate Queen’s face deepened. “Aye, that’s right,” she said slowly. “How the fuck did you know that, Chillgrave?”

Barry licked his lips and looked around the table. “Ye don’t mean… Your lads didn’t say that this was the underground river that runs under the Castle of Ascension, do ye?”

The Pirate Queen’s frown deepened even further. She wiped her greasy fingers on a white linen napkin and pointed one at Barry.

“They said nothing of the kind, Chillgrave,” she said, in a low, dangerous voice. “And if you know something, or think that you know something about that yonder cave,” and the finger she was pointing at Barry switched to point at the mammoth, yawning cave mouth, “then you had fucking well better tell me what it is.”

Barry sat back in his chair and regarded Isobel out of his one good eye. At that moment, I saw the experience shining through the ancient pirate poltergeist. It looked like an invisible, frosty calmness had descended over him. It was that level-headed demeanor, I figured, that had seen him through all the years and all the fights in his life and afterlife.

“It be that river,” he said, more to himself than anyone else at the table.

“What fucking river, Chillgrave?” Isobel said, her voice rising a touch. “I wasn’t sure where the rift came out exactly. I was only aware that it was bound to make smuggling in and out of the capital a breeze, according to the fucker I fed to the panic crabs. That’s why I sent the bloody scouts through first, to find out exactly where the rift opened into.”

Barry looked away from Isobel and addressed me.

“Mr. Mauler,” he said, “that there rift entrance was well known to me, many years ago now. It was a cheeky little hole that divided the Spectral Realm from Avalonia, and it brought in a shitload of doubloons.”

“But…?” Cecilia asked, taking the word straight out of my mouth.

“But I had to quit using it,” the poltergeist pirate said.

“Why?” Mallory asked.

“I doubt we’re going to like what comes next,” Enwyn muttered under her breath.

Barry scratched absently at the patch that covered his missing eye. “Well now, that’s an easy one. Me and my crews were forced to stop making use of it because the Arcane Council found out about it and seized it for themselves.”

That shut the mouths of everyone at the table. Janet’s hand stopped halfway to her mouth with her wine goblet. The match in Meng’s fingers, which had been an inch away from the thin cigar she had been on the verge of lighting, fizzled out. Even Caxton’s constant slavering devouring of those gross clamacondas was arrested by this revelation.

“You’re telling me,” said Isobel Galeflint quietly, still pointing at the impenetrable maw of the gaping cave mouth, “that the bloody Arcane Council could be on the other side of the rift I just sent my scouts through?”

Barry, cool as a cucumber that’s just taken an ice bath in Alaska, said, “Could? Nay, Admiral. I’d say that the chances are that they’re definitely on the other side of that rift you just sent your scouts through.”

“How can you be so certain, Barry?” Cecilia asked, feigning optimism. “Perhaps it’s an entirely different rift?”

“After they found out about the underground river and the rift,” Barry said, “which they probably wouldn’t ever have done if it weren't for a disgruntled drunk hand in my employ who tipped ‘em off, the bastards on the Arcane Council got busy.”

“Busy?” Isobel said woodenly. “Busy how?”

“They excavated a great space under the Castle of Ascension,” Barry told us. “They turned it into a subterranean port and shipbuilding yard. From what I was able to gather though my spies and blokes that I bribed, they hoped to run missions into the Spectral Realm.”

“But, no Arcane Council or Avalonian boat has ever run any sort of mission into the Spectral Realm,” growled Caxton, “and that’s a fuckin’ fact. Not while you were sailing the seas, and not since you vanished neither.”

Meng nodded in agreement, the burned-out match still clutched in her blistered fingertips.

“They were only waiting on mage engineers of their own to figure out how to build ships that could survive in the Spectral Realm,” Barry said. “Leastways, that’s what I heard. When that little nugget of gossip came to my ears, I decided to have the rift sealed from this side. It meant, obviously, that we wouldn’t be able to use the rift to smuggle goods anymore. Seeing as the Queen’s forces were as tight on that place as bark to a log, that didn’t seem to matter much. I had the place sealed, and we gave it up for lost.”

“And you didn’t recognize the big fuck off cave when you arrived here?” Isobel said, failing to keep the incredulity from her voice. “You didn’t think to bloody well bring this up before now?”

“Truth to tell, like so much in this afterlife of mine, the existence of the place had totally slipped from my memory,” Barry said simply. “If ye think a brush with the Arcane Council and the sealing up of some cave registered far up the list of my past history, Admiral Galeflint, then ye can’t have been listening to half the stories they tell of old Captain Chillgrave.”

Isobel Galeflint rose slowly to her feet. She was breathing like an asthmatic bull, her chest rising and falling in a way that reminded me sharply of the sex that she, Mallory, and I had just shared. She looked like she’d enjoy nothing more just then than shoving old Captain Chillgrave’s head up his old ass, but she refrained.

Instead, she pivoted and stared out at the huge cave opening. Everyone, in fact, looked toward the mammoth cave mouth that took up one whole side of the small island.

It was dead quiet. The scouts had already rowed in and disappeared about an hour before. There was nothing to be seen. No stirring of water.

Nothing.

“Sail ho!” a voice cried from up in the rigging.

Instinctively, I leaned forward and clutched at the rail, my eyes straining into the blackness off the cave. Still though, there was nothing that I could see.

Isobel, however, seemed to see something.

“Ship to stern!” she yelled.

All of us on the poop deck turned and stomped over to the most rearward rail of The Hellbringer.

Another ship was plowing its way around the headland that sheltered the bay. For a moment, I guessed that it must surely be some vessel sent by the Avalonian Kingdom. Then, my commonsense asserted its presence, and I realized that it was yet another pirate ship.

“Who the fuck is that, Meng?” Isobel shot at the selkie who stood beside her side with her hand resting on the butt of a mana pistol.

Meng shielded her eyes with a hand. “Looks to be… Chopsticks Nutlee, Admiral.”

“You’re sure?” Isobel asked.

“Aye, that’s the ruddy Tainted Waif,” Caxton said, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. “Ain’t no other ship so ill-kept as Chopstick’s vessel.”

It was true. I hadn’t really noticed it when Captain Nutlee had pulled up next to our schooner the day before, having nothing to really compare it to, but her ship didn’t look like the cleanest vessel. More accurately, it looked like you’d be able to catch a venereal disease just by setting foot on the deck. The hull was covered in barnacles and other limpid growths, the sails were the off-white color of unwashed underpants after a four-day music festival, and there was a general air of dilapidated neglect about the ship.

“I wonder what that sack of wine wants?” Barry muttered in an aside to me.

“Trouble, you reckon?” I asked.

“Pirates like Nutlee always want trouble, sir,” Barry replied.

“I thought trouble was a pirate’s middle name?” I said. “Sort of goes with the territory, doesn’t it?”

Barry gave me a look and then squinted out at the approaching shape of the Tainted Waif. “Aye,” he admitted, “that it does, but more for them pirates as have dust and fluff betwixt the ears, if ye follow my drift, sir?”

“You mean, the best pirates are the ones who actually make an effort to engage their brains at some point?” I asked.

“Aye, that’s right, sir,” Barry agreed.

“Chopsticks Nutlee didn’t strike me as one of the Multiverse’s great thinkers,” I said.

“Nay, sir,” Barry said. “There are them as think and them as do, and then there is them like Captain Nutlee.”

“One of those idiots who think that treading lightly is for the weak and the fearful?” I asked. “One of those who hasn’t figured out that a little fear and a little tact are actually a sign of common sense?”

Barry nodded and sighed. “Aye, that’d be it in a nutshell, sir. Which, ironically, is all that’d be needed to house dear Chopstick’s brain.”

As the Tainted Waif drew alongside, we could all see the big, sloppy shape of Captain Nutlee moving jerkily down the deck. The gnoll captain, despite having two peg legs, still managed to move at a fair clip, though I thought that she might have been powered by rage right now, more than anything else.

“She looks…” Enwyn began.

“She looks pissed,” said Janet.

The obese gnoll captain sure did. Even from where we stood, with the wind blowing from behind us so that sound struggled to reach us, I could tell that she was in the sort of irrational, arm-waving rage that could see even your most placid member of society do something as irrational as dick punch a baby.

And Chopsticks Nutlee, though our acquaintance had been blessedly short-lived, did not strike me as your average member of society.

“Ahoy there, Nutlee,” Barry called as the Tainted Waif cruised slowly past, only twenty or so feet away from us.

“Ahoy your fuckin’ self, Chillgrave, you loathsome worm!” came the spit-flecked reply from Nutlee.

“That’s not very nice,” Barry admonished.

“Nice? Nice? I’ll tell you what’s not nice, you cock-juggling squish mitten,” Captain Nutlee roared furiously, “it’s hearing from some shit-kicker in the port this morning that you and our great and gracious Admiral here have struck up a deal, a deal that pisses all over the agreement that you and I previously arranged!”

Isobel leaned over the rail casually. “I’m sorry that this news has come as a blow, Nutlee, but you must recall that we’re all bloody pirates here, and it wasn’t as if you hadn’t already tried to throw Captain Chillgrave to the sharks with me, was it?”

Chopsticks Nutlee was walking back along the deck as her ship moved past ours, so that she could remain talking to us.

“Ah, you’re full o’ shit, Admiral Galeflint!” she said.

“Careful, sailor,” Isobel said, in a voice dripping with menace. “I’ve just eaten a fair meal, which is why I'm in a relatively good mood, but if you push your luck…”

Nutlee’s ship passed by, and her string of curses were lost in the wind. As the Tainted Waif prepared to cruise past our other side, Isobel said to Meng and Caxton, “Make sure the mana-cannons are primed and ready. Nutlee is angry, and she’s stupid enough to miss the water if she threw herself overboard—a dangerous combination for one in charge of a pirate ship. If she should get any clever ideas and decide to open fire on us, I want you to hit her with a broadside that’ll knock her into the middle of next week, got it?”

Caxton and Meng saluted and hurried off.

Looking at the gnoll captain dancing in a rage around her deck, she was almost certainly on the verge of laying a hefty broadside on either Isobel’s or Barry’s ship. They do say, after all, that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and Nutlee looked like a woman who had been scorned like none other.

Her ship cruised menacingly past Barry’s schooner, which was just undergoing its final minor repairs. My palm itched with the need to summon my staff so that, should Chopsticks Nutlee crack and let loose with her mana-cannons, I might clip her with a well-placed Blazing Bolt.

The Tainted Waif was level with our schooner now. Barry’s ship, if it was attacked, was right in the way of the guns of The Hellbringer. If Nutlee was going to try and get her revenge on Captain Chillgrave, then now would be the time.

I saw the gnoll pause in her tirade and consider the vessel next to her. She was one of those people who can’t act and think at the same time, and I could practically hear the wheels turning in her head as she drew up a mental pros and cons list of shooting the vessel.

I saw her look sideways at a tall female figure that I assumed was her first mate.

The stupid ass potato is actually going to give the order, I thought dimly.

I conjured my staff to my hand. With the distance and the ropes, beams, sails, and people obstructing my shot, hitting Captain Nutlee was going to require nothing short of divine intervention.

The sound of mana-cannons booming rolled across the waters of the bay.

But they hadn’t come from the Tainted Waif. They hadn't even come from one of our ships.

The Tainted Waif rocked as it was hit squarely by a fusillade of glowing orange manaballs. Tangerine fire blossomed like a series of giant, bright roses along the spell-protected side of the vessel, as most of the crew were thrown off their feet by the unexpected assault. A taut rope attached to one of the sails was severed, and it whipped across the deck with such speed and pent up energy that it went through a seawoman like a hot wire through a wheel of brie and left her in two gory pieces on the deck.

The panic and the shock and the surprise was tangible even from where we stood on the deck of The Hellbringer.

“What the fucking fuck?” Janet said succinctly.

A galleon, crisp white sails fluttering and dark wood gleaming, was moving out of the cave mouth like a bear that’s just been awakened from slumber. Even as we watched, the cannons mounted to its bow spat misty orange vapor. A second later, we heard the sound of the shot. More manaballs smashed into Chopstick Nutlee’s reeling ship, rocking it once more.

“To arms, to arms, you dogs!” Barry roared in a voice like guns and drums. “It’s the damned Arcane Council! Here they bloody come! Man the cannons, charge the muskets! Take no prisoners and show no mercy, for you shall receive naught from these bureaucratic buccaneers!”

Chapter 19

Everyone around us scrambled to carry out Barry’s orders as the newly arrived vessel pounded Nutlee’s ship with manaballs.

“Mr. Mauler!” Barry called to me. “Grab the ladies and get aboard our tub. I’ll meet ye there!”

I nodded, not bothering to voice my agreement. Barry had already stepped off the rail of the poop deck and was running through thin air toward his schooner as easily as if he had been descending a set of stairs that only he could see.

“Come on!” I grabbed Alura and Janet by the elbows and urged Enwyn and Cecilia to follow me. We marched across the deck toward the rope ladders that hung down from the side of The Hellbringer.

Are you a mage or not? my brain shot at me as we waited for a break in the crush of rebel sailors that had been feasting with the pirates from The Hellbringer. There were so many rebels trying to get down the rope ladders and back to our ship that it was taking what felt like an age.

“You take Cecilia,” I said to Enwyn. “Flame Flight.”

I held onto Alura and Janet as tightly as I could and, taxing my limits a little, I used my Greater Flame Flight spell to boost us up and over the scrum of people and onto the deck of our ship. Enwyn, with Cecilia holding onto her back, did the same with her own spell.

We landed a little heavily, and I staggered, but I was quickly back on my feet thanks to Alura holding on to me. My head felt light, and I guessed that my spell was only meant to lift myself and one other person.

“Are you okay?” Janet asked.

I waved her concern away and pointed to the basilisk shaped mana-canons down the port side of the schooner.

“Get into the gunner’s seat,” I ordered the women, “let’s light that motherfucker up!”

“Those motherfuckers,” Janet said.

“What?” I asked.

“Those motherfuckers,” Janet repeated, pointing past my shoulder.

I spun around.

More ships were appearing from out of the enormous cave mouth. Two more, three more, four.

“Uh oh,” I said.

“Uh oh is right,” Enwyn said.

It looked like the Arcane Council had been standing ready for such a chance as this. No doubt, as soon as they had heard that we had traveled via rift to the Spectral Realm, they had started putting this little armada together. I imagined that they had probably had teams of mages working on opening the rift when Isobel’s scouts had unexpectedly done the job for them from the closed side.

They would have thought that Yuletide had come early, that the gods were smiling on them.

Clearly, they had perfected the art of building war vessels capable of making the transition between the Spectral Realm and Avalonia, because the galleons sailing into view unfortunately did not show any signs of imploding into compressed balls of fractured wood and pulped flesh.

“The only thing that we have going for us right now,” I said to the four women as we watched a sixth ship sail out of the cave, “is that they probably weren’t expecting to find five ships waiting out here for them. Now, man those damned canons and let’s light these guys up!”

“Did I ever tell you how sexy you are when you’re all worked up and go into captain mode?” Janet said as she dashed off to throw herself into the gunner’s seat of one of the mana-cannons.

“You know, I don’t think you did,” I cried after her, “but you can certainly tell me later, once we’ve sent these pricks packing.”

Enwyn, Cecilia, Alura, and I took our places in various gunner seats arrayed on the ship.

After taking those savage couple of broadsides, Captain Nutlee had gotten over her little tantrum and was now fighting back. While Barry yelled our crew to fire at anything that wasn’t a pirate ship, the Tainted Waif headed out into the bay and began shooting red manaballs at the enemy ships from her rusted—but still quite lethal—cannons.

It appeared that, for the time being, Chopsticks was happy to forget the grudge she held against Barry and the Pirate Queen and focus on smoking as many of the Arcane Council vessels as she could.

Cannon mist floated above the water of the bay, and the thunderous crackle of a hundred mana-muskets bounced from headland to headland, as a dozen ships traded magical blows. I sat in the gunner’s seat of a cannon on board the terribly named Flying Dutch Rudder and took my time with each and every shot. Accuracy was going to count for a lot more in this fight than straight firepower. Better to take the time to hit one of the foes than panic, miss, and have to wait while a fresh manaball manifested itself in the barrel.

“What’s the plan, Barry?” I cried as Barry stumped past, guiding our ship away from The Hellbringer so that we would present two smaller targets instead of one huge one.

“Plan, sir?” Barry asked. “Since when did you start believing in plans?”

The poltergeist pirate looked like he was in his element, despite the Avalonian armada’s clear advantage.

“Good point, Barry,” I said.

I turned back to take aim at an enemy galleon and squeezed the firing handle. I jerked in my seat as the shot blasted away. My manaball blasted apart the top beams of one of the Council ships closing in on Nutlee’s vessel. Wood rained down onto the deck of the enemy ship. One great piece of wrecked spar tumbled down and crushed one of the enemy gunners and knocked the cannon he was sitting in from its mount.

It was complete bedlam. After the sea battle that I had already experienced that day, that was fucking saying something.

The noise was indescribable and never-ending. The stink of burning magic emanating from the cannons was choking and visibility quickly became a thing of the past. All my four women and I could do, as gunners, was hope that Barry knew where the hell to steer us and take any shot we got as soon as it presented itself.

There were five ships fighting on the side of the pirates. There was our schooner, Chopstick Nutlee’s ship, Isobel’s gigantic galleon, and the two vessels she had brought along as a security detail. We were, technically, all under the overall command of the Pirate Queen, Isobel Galeflint. That overall command boiled down to nothing in the heat of battle, though, as there was no real way to communicate. Each ship was, to all intents and purposes, fighting for its life on its own. If a chance presented itself to help out an allied vessel, then we’d take it, but, when all was said and done, the main question on everyone’s mind was: how do I make sure the other guys die without getting dead myself?

I had no idea how long our ship’s magical defenses would last, but there must be a limit to the damage they could sustain before they started to weaken and let shots through. This thought seemed to have been shared by Mallory, who swung over onto our ship via a handily placed rope.

“We’re not going to have the time or manpower to sink all their ships without jeopardizing our shield integrity, Justin,” Mallory called as she strode over to me.

“Is that the dressed-up way of telling me that we’re totally fucked?” I asked.

The two of us ducked as a stream of mana musket rounds peppered the mainmast nearby, chewing splinters from the thick wood.

“Well…” Mallory said.

The Holy Mage’s hair was all over her face, which was already smeared with pale blue mana smuts. She had a mana musket of her own slung over one shoulder.

“We have to come up with something, and fast,” Mallory said.

“We need to throw them into uncertainty, to capitalize on the surprise they would have got sailing out and seeing us,” I said. “Sprinkle enough uncertainty around men like these bureaucrats, and chaos will bloom.”

Mallory nodded, raised her hand, and pointed at the ship nearest to us. For a moment, nothing happened, but perspiration sprung suddenly across the beautiful woman’s forehead and a vein pulsed in her temple.

A beam of celestial light shot down through the clouds like the golden finger of one of the more virile gods. It reminded me of the concentrated beam of a magnifying glass when it is focused at an ant or some other creepy crawly. There was an intense purity to it.

The topsail of the boat that Mallory had been pointing at burst into flame. Strips of canvas and burning splinters of wood rained down.

“That’s the stuff to give the troops,” I said with approval.

The fighting, as if on cue, turned slightly more magical after that. Spells were suddenly being flung from ship to ship. Frost, Fire, Wind, Storm, and Earth Magic were all in evidence.

A flurry of razor-sharp ice crystals sprayed ruthlessly across the hull of our schooner as we passed by an enemy ship intent on Isobel’s galleon.

One of our rebel crew, standing near the bow with a mana musket pressed to his shoulder, was caught by the tail end of the spume of Ice Magic. He screamed as his legs were covered in a beautiful crystalline frost and glued him in place. The next instant, a bolt of mana was fired down from the crow’s nest of the enemy ship and shattered the rebel’s legs like glass. His scream rose an octave or three as he toppled forward and into the sea.

“Reminds me of a joke I once heard,” Barry said, appearing at my elbow and barely flinching as a stray mana round reduced the ostentatious feather in his hat to ash.

“Now, is really not the time for jokes is it, Barry?” Mallory said, unslinging her mana musket from her shoulder.

“Yeah, haven’t you got some captaining to do or something?” Janet said from nearby, jolting in her gunner’s seat as she fired a manaball at one of the enemy vessels and blew a chunk out of its rudder.

Barry looked around at the unfolding sea battle and smiled happily. “Aye, there is that, I suppose,” he conceded and went off to bellow orders at a cluster of rebels struggling with a cannon that had run dry of mana.

Rather than waiting for her cannon to recharge itself, Enwyn leapt to her feet and used her new Conflagration spell, targeting the ship that she had just crippled. I saw that her idea was to put off any mages on the other ship firing any retaliatory spells our way by distracting them until we were out of range. A pillar of roiling flame appeared and started to move with purpose toward the enemy ship. The vessel’s defenses prevented the spell from immediately incinerating it, but it left scorch marks on the ship’s deck and set more than a few enemy sailors aflame. They howled and tossed themselves overboard in desperate attempts to put out their burning bodies.

Barry steered our schooner into the lee cast by the Pirate Queen’s ginormous galleon, in the hope that Isobel might help us take out an enemy craft hot on our tail and peppering us with mana shot from its bow chasers.

The gunners of The Hellbringer helped us out all right, and then some.

The broadside that they unleashed at the Arcane Council’s ship defied belief. The mana-cannon fire whistled over our heads and engulfed us in an acrid fog of mana smoke. One of the manaballs actually left a hole in one of our sails, they passed that close to us.

The front of the ship tailing us and firing at our stern with its bow chasers disintegrated under the onslaught. We had been popping away at our pursuer with our own stern chasers, but the sheer concentrated power and number of manaballs fired from The Hellbringer shattered whatever shield had been deflecting our schooner’s shots and reduced the bow of the foe’s ship to matchwood. Water rushed into the breached hull as the ship’s own momentum pushed it onward.

Thinking that I could speed up the demise of the doomed ship, I summoned a powerful Flame Barrier spell and conjured a simple, but quite large, block barricade just in front of the enemy vessel.

The weakened timbers shattered as they made contact with the Fire spell. The entire bow folded in on itself like an accordion. Sailors cried out as the ship stopped dead in the water and began to sink in earnest, twisting sideways as the waves claimed it.

Standing at the back rail of our schooner, I watched the ship go down. One of the mages on the top deck hopped into the gunner’s seat of one of the mana-cannons and attempted to get one last shot off at us.

The manaball was aimed with hate and fear and flew directly toward the stern, heading for the captain’s cabin.

Quickly altering my Flame Barrier spell, I crafted a razor-sharp flaming axe blade in the air, just behind our ship. The manaball hit the supernatural blade and sheared cleanly in two, its magic dissipating as it hit the water.

And so the battle went on.

Barry guided our ship around in sweeping figures of eight, constantly moving, constantly scanning the waters for targets while the rest of us, the crew, did everything we could to protect our weakening shield and cause as much damage as possible to any of the opposing forces we encountered.

Guns, surprisingly, were the order for the day for just about everyone. This surprised me at first, but then I realized that a mage could deplete their own mana reserves in less time than it took to say ‘Abra kadabra alakazam’ unless they were careful. Not only were they then out of the fight offensively, but they were usually physically done too.

It was my first real lesson in how a War Mage had to think of the long game when they were involved in a prolonged battle. Unless they had some incantation like my Leech spell up their sleeve, which enabled them to steal mana from other sources or mages, then they had to bide their time and use their spells when they thought they would produce maximum damage.

Having access to quite a large arsenal of spells, and not being limited to a single branch of magic like every other mage involved in that sea battle, I was at a distinct advantage. I could act opportunistically, different spells as chance and circumstance allowed.

As we passed close to another enemy ship, which happened to be heading in the opposite direction to us, I unleashed that tasty little hex of mine that brought five undead wolverines into being. I deployed the creatures with a wave of my hand and saw to my amazement, as they landed on the deck of the enemy frigate and started to do their hellish work, that in the Spectral Realm there was nothing undead-looking about the wolverines. Here, in this realm, the magically conjured creatures were sleek, well-muscled, brutish animals with claws like polished ivory switch blades, teeth that dripped saliva, and eyes of lambent yellow.

They fell upon the stunned crew like the hounds of C. Montgomery Burns, rending and tearing their way around the deck as the hands tried to deal with them.

While they were thus distracted, a good score of our rebel crewmates raked the deck with musket fire, while Alura summoned her Crystal Hound. The creature, now upgraded from its Crystal Pup form, was impervious to basic ranged weapons like crossbows and throwing knives and fell upon the enemy crew with gusto, adding to the confusion.

It was only a matter of time before one of the larger enemy ships attempted to use grapnels to reel us in and engage in a little hand-to hand-combat. I had assumed that this would happen sooner or later. The Arcane Council would want to take at least a few prisoners so that they could interrogate them about the defenses of Cupido Island and whatever else they were interested in. Barry’s schooner, being the smallest vessel in the thrown together pirate fleet, was naturally the favorite option.

The first magical grapnel hooks landed and skittered over the deck, shooting out tendrils that fastened them onto the first thing they came in contact with.

I wished that I could summon my Amber Dragon, Kazrith. There were few things more distracting to a bunch of professional sailors and soldiers than a dragon appearing. I had seen that all too recently and been both on the receiving and giving side of things. A dragon shook things up like a burlesque dancer at a funeral; the appearance of one was unexpected and threw most people off their stride, even if they had been born and raised in a place like Avalonia. I could state that one categorically.

But summoning my dragon seemed pointless now that I knew it would also bring with it an enemy dragon to balance the scales. Besides, I doubted Kazrith would have enough mana to exist outside of his summoning orb for very long.

Men and women in the employ of the Arcane Council, of all shapes, races, and levels of angriness, swarmed over the side of their ship and jumped, flew, and roped over to our schooner. The girls and I readied ourselves to repel the boarders.

“Prepare to be boarded!” we heard one overzealous dude shout, a little too late, from the deck of the enemy ship. By the time that his words had rang out, we were well and truly being boarded.

I used my Telekinesis to lift a trio of huge water casks into the air just as the first bunch of Council soldiers set foot on our deck.

I waited for a few moments, while they unconsciously gathered closer together, forming a wedge. Then, I released the hex and the barrels dropped from a height of about twenty feet.

The three gigantic barrels landed, just where hoped they might, in the middle of the cluster of sailors that had just started screaming and crying out their wordless battle challenges to the rebels around me.

The rebels had prudently held back for as long as they could. As the first of the enemy sailors stepped forward, no doubt thinking that our ship was manned exclusively by cowards, the barrels smashed down on top of them. At least five men were flattened or maimed outright as the two tons of water and wood crashed down. A fresh chorus of screams joined the general clamor and then the fighting ramped up.

I fired out a few Blazing Bolts, just to keep our adversaries on their toes, and one of them hit a large crate nearby that contained something explosive. This set off a nice little chain reaction with some of the cargo, which, fortuitously, worked in our favor.

Crates and barrels exploded and went off like firecrackers, sending shrapnel of metal and shards of wood flying. Splinters scythed in all directions as the barrels carrying the gods knew what burst their bonds. One punched through the face of a nymph sailor with saffron yellow skin, while another took the top two inches of a dwarf’s skull off, exposing his slimy brain to the air. The poor guy reached up, poked at his exposed brain, and fell backward into one of his colleagues.

The initial shock of the falling barrel surprise passed, and it became clear that the Arcane Council’s sailors were an experienced crew. There was no standing around looking dumbstruck, no panic, no weeping and wailing at the sides of dead confederates. They hefted whatever weapons they had in their hands, and they came at us with a vengeance.

A blast of searing light ripped across the deck as Alura let fly with her Light Beam. The few sailors caught in the blast burst apart like ripe tomatoes. Blood and viscera misted the air and chunks of flesh slapped down onto the deck.

Cecilia summoned her Frozen Armor, and the icy segmented plates coated her in their protection. She looked like some end-game character on an MMO, all spikes and massive pauldrons. Her fists themselves were covered in spiked gauntlets, which she used to punch an enemy sailor, skewering him through the brain.

A rebel with whom I had shared a bottle of rum with the previous evening was stitched full of bloody holes by an elf with a mana musket. Another woman, who I had beaten me in a card game called Geese and Gods, had all her skin removed and her bones turned to fire by an awful spell unleashed by some maniac mage. Before I could take that bastard down, a ball of lightning suddenly appeared behind him and electrocuted him. His hair stood on end like some kind of mad scientist, and he dropped, his corpse smoking on the ship’s deck. I looked behind the orb to see Janet.

“That your new Lightning Orb spell?” I asked above the din.

“You fucking bet your ass it is!” she yelled back.

The deck of the schooner dissolved into a series of interconnected micro-skirmishes in which dwarves, nymphs, dryads, cyclops, elves, and mortals of various other kinds. Mana rounds flew in all directions. Knives and swords and axes flashed in the light of the cheerful sun.

Janet jumped over the falling body of someone she had just paralyzed with a Storm spell and rammed a dagger into the base of another enemy’s skull. She ripped the blade free and threw it overhand at a svelte, athletic dryad with dull green skin running in Barry’s direction, obviously intent on taking out the captain of the ship. The blade caught the green girl in the temple and sent her crashing into a rebel running in the opposite direction. Both of them fell overboard in a tangle of limbs.

I was confronted by a massive, bearded half-troll wielding a hammer smeared with blood. I ran him through with my Frost Shards spell, let loose at point blank range. He looked down at the magical, Frost Magic spikes sticking out from his gut and then up at me. He growled blood and stink into my face.

He was a big bastard, so I hit him with a Storm Bolt just to be sure. He shot, smoking, backward into a couple of his buddies.

It was bedlam. Hell.

And then, it was over. The enemy lay piled and dead around us. There was blood everywhere—entrails, brains, and loose limbs littered the deck.

One of the rebels, blinking rapidly in something that might have been shock, threw up over her own feet.

“Cut the ropes! Cut the lines!” Barry yelled.

I used my Flame Barrier incantation once more to produce a fiery sword out of the air. Along with a bunch of other rebels, I moved along the starboard rail and cut the magical grappling hooks tethering us to the other ship. Once we were free and clear of it, Barry, standing up on the poop deck, raised his hands and called up a phantom fire of white flame that took root in every sail of the enemy ship at once.

“Why the fuck didn’t you do that to begin with?” I panted as our schooner picked up speed once more, and we headed back into the fray.

“Not that simple, sir,” Barry told me. “My mind can only concentrate on a conjuration like that, and nothing else. I have to relinquish all my hold on our schooner to do something like that, momentarily let down every defense, lose touch with the sails, and give up controlling the rudder—not something I like to do in a battle. And, with a crew of landlubbers the likes of which most of these renegades are, sir—no offense meant, sir—it’s all the riskier.”

Out in the middle of the bay, The Hellbringer was being harried by three of the Arcane ships simultaneously. Our foe had obviously realized that Isobel and her huge galleon were the alpha threats here. It looked like the enemy was hoping to take her down before they lost any more of their ships.

It wasn’t as if things were going all our way, though. There was a column of greasy black smoke rising into the clear blue sky, a towering, reeking finger of black and gray shot with dancing purple sparks. It was coming from one of the ships that had been guarding The Hellbringer when it had sailed into the bay: one of ours. It was some distance away, but we could see all the hands on the deck running hither thither as they attempted to control the magical conflagration.

“That does not bode well,” Mallory said as she and I took a moment to catch our breath.

Her observation was accurate. A second or two later, the pirate vessel exploded. The cracking detonation rolled across the waters of the bay, and the ship burst apart in a swirling vortex of purple fire that spiraled into the air some hundred feet.

There was little time for being disheartened at the sight of one of our allies being obliterated, though.

“Brace!” I heard Barry cry.

“Brace!”

“Brace!”

The message was passed along the ship by any rebel who could still pack some punch into their voice.

“Brace for impact!”

One of the Arcane Council vessels had cruised within broadside range of us, and they had taken the opportunity to give their gunners a little target practice.

The shock of fifteen or so manaballs hitting us side-on sent groaning shivers through the hull of our schooner. The shield spell, which I had seen Barry cloak the ship in, ripple. In a sudden straining instance, the shield popped like a diamond soap bubble.

“Ah, shiver my fuckin’ ass!” Barry yelled in rage.

It was not the sort of exclamation that you want to hear from the guy steering your boat when you’re in the middle of a sea battle, especially when you’re still staring down the wrong end of about twenty mana-cannons.

“Barry, do something!” Cecilia yelled. She too had obviously perceived the slender thread that now held us above the mincing machine of fate.

“Hold onto your cutlasses!” the poltergeist screeched back. “Dropping port anchor!”

There was the clink-clink-clink-clink-clink-clink sound of rapidly unpooling chain, followed by a large splash, and then the whole schooner ducked hard right.

It was the equivalent of a handbrake turn in a car. Every hand standing on the deck of our ship was thrown from their feet as the schooner lurched violently around so that the bow was pointing at the enemy ship taking aim at us.

I rolled and tumbled into the foremast, the breath driven out of me, but I was able to grab Cecilia and Mallory as they rolled into me and stop them getting hurt.

“Holy shit!” Mallory gasped.

Hey, I guess if anyone knew when that curse was appropriate, it was her.

There was a roar as the mana-cannons of our adversary were fired in what would have been, had it not been for the evasive maneuver that Barry had just pulled, a sweeping broadside. With a drastically narrowed target, most of the manaballs now missed completely and splashed harmlessly into the ocean behind us, sending up geysers of white spray.

One shot, though, did find the target. It smashed into the bow of the schooner in a burst of dull blue fire. A severed rope scythed through the air, whipping across the deck like a released rubber band. Luckily, everyone was still flat on their asses, and no one was injured. Splinters of wood, some as big around as my wrist, were sent flying, a hail of organic shrapnel that put holes in the lower sails and stuck quivering into the bulwarks.

There was a scream then, an animal noise that stopped my heart because I recognized who the voice belonged to.

“Alura!” I said, jumping to my feet.

Chapter 20

After hearing Alura’s pained scream, I sprinted down the deck toward the nose of the vessel, hurdling over fallen renegades, leaping over dead bodies, and dodging those people trying to haul themselves to their feet.

The scream had died down to a dull moan. Somehow, I could hear it even over the excited, frantic chatter of the crew.

I skidded to a halt near the prow, where the damage caused by the manaball looked to be most severe.

Alura, the Gemstone Princess, was lying in a mess of shattered timbers, smoldering rope, and busted crates. Her face was drawn with pain, and she was clutching at her leg.

I blinked and tried to keep the worry out of my eyes and off my face.

There was a sliver of wood, roughly as thick as my thumb, sticking out of Alura’s crystalline right leg. There was about four inches of wood showing, but I had no idea how deeply it might be buried in her thigh. There was a pool of mercury colored liquid surrounding the injury, dripping from her thigh and over the deck.

Blood, or so I guessed.

“That looks like it stings,” I said, trying to use humor to keep Alura from freaking out. I knelt down to have a closer look. The piece of wood was not too jagged, but it looked more like a stake that you might try and kill a vampire with. I thought it might actually have been a peg or something, used for tying rope to.

Alura gave a little pain-racked snort. “That, I think, would be a bit of an understatement.”

There was only one thing I could do, one option available to me.

I looked up to see what was going on with the ship that had fired on us.

Our schooner was set on a head to side collision course with the vessel in question. I had no idea what Barry thought he was going to do. As far as I knew, we did not have a ram on the prow of this schooner, but maybe Barry’s schematics included a hidden one. In all honesty, even if that was the case, I wasn’t sure if we were going to get into ramming range in the time it took the mana-cannons on our adversary’s ship to recharge themselves.

It looked pretty fucking dire to me.

I concentrated on the one thing that I might be able to help with, which was alleviating Alura’s discomfort.

Gently, instinctively, I pressed my hand to the nasty wound.

“Justin,” the Gemstone Princess said through gritted teeth, “what are you—”

“Shh,” I said gently.

With my staff in one hand, I reached for my newest spell, Blessed Zephyr, and channeled the mana into Alura in a way that I could not describe, even to myself.

A wind that was not of the world around us gusted over the bow. Alura’s gossamer-like hair blew around her face, and she closed her eyes against the sudden breeze.

The wind was at once warm and cool, soothing, prickling with an energy and revitalization. It carried with it the smell and tang of tea tree oil. The Gemstone Elemental’s skin beneath my hand warmed. Looking down, I was astounded to see the sliver of wood beginning to work itself free, sliding smoothly out of the gaping hole in Alura’s thigh. Silvery blood welled out of the wound as the splinter was pushed out of Alura’s leg by my magic, but as soon as the stake fell clattering to the deck, the crystalline flesh of her leg knitted closed.

And she was whole once more.

I had been sitting on my heels, but suddenly experienced the sensation of having my head part company with my body—I was that light-headed. Fighting the urge to take a nap, I sat down heavily and leaned against a fallen barrel.

“Are you okay, Justin?” I heard Alura say.

Something about this struck me as funny. Hadn’t she been the one with the piece of wood skewered through her leg?

“I’m fine,” I said. “Just… just give me a sec. I think healing spells really take it out of you, you know.”

Alura had gotten to her feet and was flexing her leg, looking amazed.

“It feels good as new,” she said. “Better than it did before!”

“My spellbook did say that Blessed Zephyr was good for healing minor wounds and bolstering strength. Though I guess the energy and mana has to come from somewhere.”

I puffed out my cheeks, feeling a little nauseous. My head had stopped spinning, but the sooner we got this fucking battle done, the better.

“That ship that just shot at us hasn’t decided to flee by any chance, has it?” I asked.

Alura turned, and she swallowed. “No, it is still there.”

“That’s too bad.”

I got to my feet, helped by Mallory who had just arrived at the bow with Janet, Cecilia, and Enwyn.

We were still fifty yards from the other ship. I could see the Arcane Council’s soldiers swarming the deck as the gunners sighted their cannons.

“We’re screwed,” said Janet, who was always one to call it how she saw it.

“I’d have to agree, darling,” Cecilia added.

“It ain’t over till the fat lady sings,” I said lightly.

Chopsticks Nutlee’s ship crashed into the side of the enemy vessel from, seemingly, out of nowhere. The Tainted Waif’s prow, it appeared, was equipped with a ram, and Nutlee used it to smash into the stern of the enemy ship, throwing them into disarray. By the time the captain of the enemy ship had figured out what had happened, Nutlee was already sailing away.

And we were upon the foe.

Which was when Barry let loose with his hidden weapon: a fire cannon.

The blasting burst of flaming monochromatic magic fire issued from the front of our schooner. From some hidden place in the bow, it poured out and engulfed the main deck of the enemy ship. The twenty or so sailors caught in the roasting jet exploded into wisps of nothingness as they were swallowed up in the stream of magical fire. There was no time for them to even scream. Their bodies were simply reduced to something less substantial than dust and blown out to sea.

A cheering roar went up from our crew, but it was suddenly cut short when the purple tentacles of the kraken snaked up out of the depths and rose high above the burning ship.

“Oh, sure,” Janet said, her eyes glued on the monstrous and terrifying apparition, “come and steal our thunder why don’t you, you slimy bastard.”

“Hey,'” I said, “that pet of Galeflint’s can steal our thunder any time if it means it’s going to get a taste for the opposition. Personally, I was wondering when the hell it was going to start pulling its weight.”

The tentacles, instead of coming down with the force of a glacier on the burning vessel, this time descended and twined themselves around the ship in a careful embrace. I could see the shrouds and rigging collapsing and the huge suckers of the tentacles ripping up boards as they found purchase.

“What do you suppose that dude is up to?” Janet asked.

“The man with the torch?” Alura asked, squinting.

“That looks to me like he is the captain,” Mallory said.

Barry had turned us sharply so that we wouldn’t collide with the blazing enemy ship, but we were still close enough to it to feel the heat from the spreading phantasmic fires. Through the roiling smoke and falling ash, I could just make out a figure running along the deck, with a sputtering and flickering torch in his hand. It looked to be a sorcerous torch, for it was spitting green sparks.

“He’s got to be the captain,” I said. “Look at the size of the guy’s hat.”

The captain of the vessel flung open a hatch on the main deck just as the tentacles of the kraken squeezed downward. The mighty sea creature pulled the enormous vessel beneath the surface of the sea with the ease that I might have pulled down a rubber duck under the surface of my bath. The last I saw of the man in the big hat, he was throwing himself into the hold.

With an anticlimactic bubbling noise, the enemy ship was pulled below the surface to be consumed by the ravenous behemoth.

“Fuck me, I’m glad that thing is on our side,” I said.

“What do you think the captain was doing?” Mallory mused, her brow furrowed in contemplation.

“He looked like a man who was intent on going down with his ship,” I said. “Not that he had any choice in the matter once the kraken got hold of it.”

“Yes, but that torch…” Enwyn said as our schooner turned toward the cave mouth where the battle was still raging and mana-cannon mist lay heavy over the water. The other ship that had been guarding The Hellbringer was sailing across the patch of ocean under which the kraken had just pulled its prey. Evidently, the captain of the vessel had seen how close we had been to coming a cropper and had been sent by Isobel to ensure we didn’t require assistance.

“Yes, that torch did look like it had some sort of specific purpose, didn’t it?” Alura said thoughtfully. “Almost as if—”

The whole area where the kraken had drawn the enemy ship down, a good one-hundred feet by one-hundred feet of water, boiled on the surface for a fraction of a second, becoming a mass of fizzing and twinkling bright white bubbles. With a hissing roar that made Mallory involuntarily cling to me where we stood, the ocean erupted like a hundred-foot-wide geyser.

It reminded me of the footage you see of depth charges going off, though on a far more violent and massive scale. The ocean fountained upward, a column of rushing sea water laced and impregnated with green fire and lightning.

The friendly pirate ship that had been traveling toward us over that stretch of doomed water was plucked into the air like a leaf in a tornado. It was lifted, well over one-thousand tons of ship, about fifty feet by the force of the explosion. It broke apart in the air as its great bulk twisted and groaned and shattered.

It was one of the most awesome and horrifying things I could remember seeing, and that was saying something.

The flailing, screaming bodies of sailors could be made out as they were flung through the mist-filled air and disappeared into the column of roaring spray.

The whole spectacle of an entire ship destroyed in an instant was bad enough, but then there came the gigantic, rancid, stinking chunks of extirpated kraken flying out and raining down like sushi from hell.

I could see what had happened, of course. It was all terribly obvious now. The captain of the doomed enemy ship had been a wily opponent, right up until the last.

In his final moments, the man had clearly taken that fizzing thaumaturgical torch and touched off some mana explosives or something within the ship’s hold.

As a final fuck you to Isobel Galeflint and her pirate scum, he had made the kraken’s last meal into a bomb. The kraken had swallowed what amounted to a block of C4 and had received the most spectacular case of indigestion in return.

“There goes our MVP,” I muttered as, with a rending boom, the remains of the obliterated pirate ship hit the surface of the sea and spread out across it like so many twigs and bits of torn cloth.

“There goes another one of our allies,” Mallory groaned softly.

We both made good points. In one fiery, scalding instant we had lost the creature that could have singlehandedly won us the battle, and lost a ship.

“I’m not entirely sure how things could be much shitter, right at this very moment,” Janet said.

The only sound was the occasional meaty splash as a chunk of kraken that had been blown a little higher than all the rest landed back in the sea.

“Janet, if you’ve learned nothing else over the past few months, you must have learned that there is always some way that things can go more pear-shaped than they already are,” I said.

“Sail ho!” Barry yelled from the poop.

We turned and saw him pointing back toward the island, back toward the cave.

The blackness of the mouth of the cave turned to gray and then to white as yet another vast Arcane Council ship emerged from out of it.

“There you go,” I said resignedly, even as my spirit hardened into a thing of steel and adamant and diamond. “My point exactly. Just when you believe things can’t get worse, along comes the fucking Multiverse, right on cue.”

The Avalonian Kingdom vessel was followed by another and another, and three more.

“That leaves us at a…” Alura turned her head quickly and bit her lip. “A nine to three disadvantage.”

“Not great odds, really,” Cecilia said.

I clapped my hands and let out a sigh. For some reason, I felt quite cheerful. “Ah, you know what they say. Just when things are going most wrong, that’s when they start to go right.”

“That sounds like a load of bullshit to me,” said Janet mildly.

“Agreed,” Enwyn added.

I didn’t reply. They might have been right.

But I couldn’t be glum. This was what it was all about, this was why we had started our training at the Mazirian Academy.

We were War Mages.

I looked around at my five friends: Mallory, Alura, Janet, Cecilia, and Enwyn.

“We’re War Mages,” I said, speaking the words. “And this is a war.”

I wasn’t expecting a round of high-fives or a chorus of lame-ass cheering, and I was not disappointed. What I got were five extremely intense looks coupled with grim smiles.

“If we’re going to sell our lives,” Alura said proudly, “then let us be sure to sell them as dearly as possible.”

“Roger that,” I said, turning to face the oncoming armada.

The Hellbringer and The Tainted Waif had managed to get away from the three remaining ships that had first exited the cave mouth. The two vessels came to meet us now, where we had almost come to a halt on one side of the bay. They circled in close, close enough for Isobel to hail us from where she stood on the poop deck of The Hellbringer.

“They killed my bloody kraken,” she roared, and I could hear the undiluted fury in her voice.

“Well, if it makes ye feel any better, lass,” Barry called back, “me gizzard is telling me that all of us are going to be sitting with that monster of yours at the bottom of the sea within the hour.”

“Fuck that!” Isobel Galeflint bellowed. “I’m not letting any of this scum set foot in the halls of Castle Goldskull. We will finish them here and now!”

I didn’t want to be the one to use simple arithmetic to tell her that we were hopelessly outnumbered, so I kept my lip buttoned up nice and tight.

The nine enemy ships were spreading out across the far side of the bay. They were taking up a formation that looked like they would encircle our three boats in a loose crescent moon formation and then let us have it from three directions at once with their mana-cannons.

A barrage like that with no shields…

The phrase ‘a snowball's chance in Hell’ bounced into my mind like a pinball.

The enemy ships moved in closer and closer, fanning out, but with every one of their vessels keeping a similar distance away from us. It was obvious that they meant to keep on the very edge of mana-cannon range to minimize their own casualties, while being able to concentrate their own fire in a way that would cause maximum damage to our three hemmed-in ships.

“Anyone got any fuckin’ bright ideas?” Chopsticks Nutlee called from the deck of the Tainted Waif. “How about you, Chillgrave, ye double-crossing rotter? No doubt you’ll manage to snake your way out of this mess somehow.”

“Fuck you very much, Nutlee,” Barry replied evenly, his eyes sliding from one enemy ship to the next.

“Just give them everything you have as soon as they’re in range!” I shouted the words so that every renegade nearby could hear. “There’s nothing to be gained now by reserving mana. Give them hell!”

To my surprise, and secret delight, a colossal roar went up. Not just from the rebels on my ship, but from many of the sailors on The Hellbringer, and even on Captain Nutlee’s tub.

The nine ships drew closer.

It wouldn’t be long now before the flash and roar of the cannons sounded.

I licked my lips, which had gone suddenly dry, and pondered on what spell to use. Maybe a Meteor Shower followed by a Rain of Toads followed by as many Blazing Bolts as I was capable of letting off before the enemy guns did us in.

I toyed with the idea of loosing an Abomination, but I had no idea whether the thing could swim or survive in salt water, even though it looked more than half like a giant jellyfish. While I was all for every mage going balls to the wall with their magic, I wasn’t about to waste a buttload of mana on an incantation that may or may not work.

No. Better to stick with what would actually fuck up the Arcane Council’s fleet as much as possible, rather than roll the dice on the Abomination.

“Hey,” I said, addressing the five women next to me, five of my best friends in all the world. “Hey, I just wanted to say something to you all.”

“Uh oh, this isn’t one of those goddamn sort of cute, sort of worrying we’re-about-to-die-so-I-better-tell-you-all-how-much-you-mean-to-me speeches, is it?” Janet quipped.

I paused and looked around at the five anxious but determined faces.

“Fuck no!” I said casually, rolling my eyes as if this was the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard and not precisely what I had been about to do.

“Good,” said Janet.

“No, I was just going to tell you ladies that, if we get through this, you should really try and put a bit more effort into your appearance, you know?” I said.

I looked at the five absolutely stunning visions of female beauty standing in front of me, with their wild hair and their dirt and blood-stained threads, their grimy hands and their faces besmirched with mana-cannon dust and crusted with salt. Even though they looked like they had been dragged through a battle zone backwards by a Humvee, they still somehow managed to exude a sexual femininity that was only enhanced by all the blood and muck.

“I mean, I know we’re at sea and everything, but we really shouldn’t be letting standards slip like this,” I finished with a wink.

The five girls laughed. It was an incongruous sound, surrounded as it was by all that death and destruction.

“Kiss my arse, Justin Mauler,” Cecilia said, kissing me affectionately on the cheek.

Mallory was shaking her head and chuckling in a bemused fashion. Janet was clutching her ribs and laughing harder than either of the others. Alura simply smiled and shook her head, while Enwyn placed her hands on her hips and tutted to herself.

“It’s a good job Barry isn’t here,” Janet said between gasps. “Can you imagine what he’d think of all that wasted seafood? A kraken is probably a delicacy he’s just itching to cook up.”

Their laughter puttered slowly out.

“I wish that we could see all those guys again,” I said as we watched the Arcane Council net tighten.

“Meh, who’s to say that we won’t?” Janet said. “Who’s to say that death isn’t just like life?”

“In what respect?” Enwyn asked.

“In the way that no one really knows how to live,” I interrupted. “They just live. Right, Janet?”

Janet shrugged and nodded. “Yeah. Who’s to say that death isn’t like that too?”

I took a long, deep breath of tangy sea air. The sun was warm on my face, and I had five of my closest friends at my side.

“If we’re fated to face insurmountable odds and perish in our attempt to beat them,” I said, “at least we have a good day for it.”

The cannons roared their challenge.

Only, they weren’t the cannons of the Arcane Council’s ships.

Then, with another reverberating roar of guns, seven ships rounded the headland on our right. One of the Arcane Council ships was hit with a silvery, greasy-looking barrage of manaballs. I guessed the manaballs were overflowing with Chaos Magic, because instead of blowing the vessel up or setting it on fire, they melted it like it had been an ice-cream sat next to a blast furnace.

“It’s goddamn Reginald Chaosbane!” Janet screamed with delight. “It’s the goddamn Headmaster and the rest of them!”

It was goddamn Reginald Chaosbane, and he did look to be leading the rest of the rebel fleet that I thought had been spread to the four winds.

The other seven ships didn’t mess around once they arrived at the scene of the battle. There was no waving of flags or cheering. That would have been a complete waste of time.

The Headmaster was known to be an eerily perceptive man, and clearly he knew exactly who was who and what ships needed taking out. With his ship leading, the half dozen other rebel ships set to destroying the amazed Arcane Council fleet with gusto.

We had the advantage of numbers, and we had the advantage of surprise. Not only that, but we also had the will, determination, and courage of some of the most notable young mages at the Mazirian Academy; Rick, Damien, Bradley, Nigel. Combined with the skillful older hands such as Madame Xel, Odette Scaleblade, Idman Thunderstone, Igor, Leah, and Mort Chaosbane, Aunt Ruth, and Reginald himself, and we had some of the heaviest hitting mages in Avalonia on our side.

The sudden appearance of our own ragtag armada bolstered the flagging confidence of the three ships. The Hellbringer unfurled sail and set straight out to take the fight to the enemy, and I could tell that Barry Chillgrave was keen to do the same.

Isobel Galeflint and her ship passed out of easy earshot and the thunder of cannons from almost twenty warships threatened to crack the very sky open with their noise. It was then that the revolting and traitorous pirate captain, Chopsticks Nutlee, made her move.

It was the age-old double-cross while everyone was looking in the other direction, while everyone else was busy fighting for their lives against a common enemy.

On paper, it was just about the most lowdown son of a bitch maneuver that you could pull on someone, and I had to say that it personified Chopsticks Nutlee down to a tee. Might’ve worked too, had she been trying to take out the greenest greenhorn this side of Greenland.

Who she was really trying to hoodwink and get the drop on, though, was none other than Captain Barry motherfuckin’ Chillgrave.

The Tainted Waif was already close to our schooner, so it was an easy task for Chopsticks Nutlee to use a line to swing her bulk over to our poop deck. I saw the movement out of the corner of my eye, but it was only luck that I wasn’t looking out at the clashing fleets along with everyone else. I was too far away to do anything and, with the rocking of the boat and all the hanging ropes and the smoke, firing a Storm Bolt or the like would have been too risky.

Nutlee landed behind the distracted Barry with an incredible lightness for someone with upturned bowling pins for legs. The expression on her fat, hideous face was the look of the cat that had finally got its paws on the cream and meant to drain it to the dregs.

In any fictional world there would have been one of those great culminating fights where the two pirates fight their way along the yardarms or along the plank or some other shit like that.

What Barry told me afterward was that he smelled something foul and turned in time to block Chopstick Nutlee’s initial stab with the butt of the pistol that he was holding. Both dagger and pistol went skittering across the deck and out of reach of either pirate captain.

Captain Nutlee wrapped her sausage-like fingers around Barry’s scrawny neck and began to squeeze.

“If ye look up the word ‘traitor’ in the dictionary,” Chopsticks hissed venomously between her teeth, “ye’ll find a picture of you, Chillgrave.”

“Aye, well, at least my dictionary doesn’t have pictures in it, ye fuckin’ idiot,” Barry retorted and made his move.

The poltergeist captain rammed his head forward and shattered Chopsticks’s already deformed-looking nose with a savage headbutt. As the gnoll staggered away, Barry stamped on the haft of a fallen throwing axe that lay nearby. The little throwing axe somersaulted into the air, and Barry snatched at it as it drew level with his face. As Chopstick’s Nutlee went for his throat with her pudgy fingers outstretched, Barry kicked the gnoll captain square in the vajayjay.

“Oooooh,” said Alura, who had turned to see what had distracted me and was watching the fight.

As Nutlee let out a squawk, Barry shoved the axe blade under the pirate captain’s fifth chin and swiped it across her throat. Dark blood sprayed out of Captain Nutlee’s slit neck and splashed across Barry’s chest.

And that, as they say, was the end of Captain Nutlee.

Barry, taking just enough time to wipe the worst of Chopsticks’s blood away, quickly leaned over the poop rail and bellowed for the first mate of the Tainted Waif.

When he had told the faery woman what had happened to Captain Nutlee, it turned out that dear old Chopsticks had not been overly loved by her crew. In fact, I was tempted to say that she had been viewed as nothing less than an excrescence.

The first mate seemed enthusiastic to follow Barry, especially when he had informed her that she had been bumped up to captain with an appropriate pay rise. He told her to follow him into battle and watch his back.

“Aye, aye, sir!” called the purple skinned faery, saluting with gusto.

The coming of Reginald Chaosbane and the rest of the gang was the turning of the tide in the sea battle. The Arcane Council sailors lost heart at the very moment that us renegades plumbed new depths of courage in ours.

Gradually, we worked our way through their fleet, taking one ship at a time with some rather nifty nautical teamwork.

As we were sweeping the deck under the baleful eye of Captain Chillgrave, I saw one of my fellow rebel pirates getting forced back by a wicked-faced elf with a pair of axes and charged in to help her out. I barged the back-peddling wood nymph out of harm’s way and sent her sprawling, then turned my attention to the elf.

I brought up my staff and blocked a swing from the elf, armed as he was with a pair of short-handled axes.

He growled as sparks burst into the air from the meeting of the two weapons and lunged at me again. I parried the follow-up, and then knocked the elf’s leg from under him with a beautiful rear sweep. The elf grunted and cursed for a brief instant as he hit the deck, before I brought my boot heel down as hard as I could and crushed his throat.

I switched my staff from right hand to left, scooped up a dropped dagger from the blood-slicked decking, and hurled it at a halfling bearing down on one of my fellow renegades. Unfortunately, I wasn’t Jason Bourne, and the flying knife caught the halfling in the back of the dome handle first. It was enough to put the wee fella off his stride, though. He fell with a curse, clutching at the back of head. He attempted to right himself, bright red blood pumping from the superficial wound on his scalp. He made it two paces before a blast of magic swaddled him in a suffocating cocoon of spider’s silk.

The female warrior whom I had just saved rolled to her feet, still brandishing her vector, which appeared to be a fingerless leather glove she wore, and dispatched the trapped halfling who had almost taken her down, using a nasty little vine wrapping hex that strangled the halfling in about two seconds flat.

She turned to me, eyes bright with battle fury, and smiled. The two of us locked gazes, and she nodded her head at me in thanks. Then, without warning, she scooped up a discarded spear that lay nearby and threw it as hard as she could right at me.

The spear shot over my shoulder before I even had a chance to think of getting out of the way and went right through the face of a dwarf who’d been on the verge of stabbing me in the back with a billhook.

The dwarf keeled over like a felled tree. Not really knowing what else to do, and functioning on something that resembled autopilot, I ripped the spear free of the fallen dwarf’s pulped head, noting the yellow teeth spread out across the deck like dropped jewelry. I didn’t know why I did that, maybe I meant to toss it back to the female rebel, I’m not sure. You did weird things in combat, I had noticed.

I turned, a smile of thanks now on my blood-speckled face, just in time to see the female renegade have the back of her head hacked open by a centaur that galloped past behind her.

The renegade stumbled, her mouth hanging slack, one eye crossed. She rotated on the spot, moving with the force of the blow that had killed her. The back of her skull had been cleaved clean away. I could see her brain glistening wetly in the awful gaping wound.

She fell and lay still, eyes staring up into the sky visible between the flapping sails of the mainmast. Staring into the blue. Staring beyond it.

Not nice. Not pleasant to see. Necessary though, many would argue, in the quest to save the Multiverse, which had been set out before us.

And, perhaps, a fair trade for a ghost army. For that is what, when all the smoke cleared and the last of our enemies was cast over the side of their burning ship, was what we had.

While the rebels and pirates celebrated together on the decks of the remaining ships, I joined Reginald Chaosbane and Isobel Galeflint on the poop deck of The Hellbringer.

There are few things that bring people together more effectively than surviving a hellish sea battle, and Isobel Galeflint and I had now cemented quite a friendship.

“You have my word we will supply Spectral troops for your cause, Justin Mauler,” the Pirate Queen said to me as she and Reginald shook hands. She turned her gray eyes on me. “What is more, after the courage that you and your compatriots showed here today, I think the very least I can do is guide you to where the Stronghold of the Twin Spirits is.”

I let out a sigh that was at least thirty-three-point-three percent relieved laughter.

“Thank fuck for that,” I said.

“Thank fuck indeed,” Reginald Chaosbane said with a small smile. “And now, I think there are quite a few people who are keen on sharing some libations with you, Mr. Mauler.”

He pointed down to the deck of The Hellbringer where Janet, Mallory, Cecilia, Enwyn, Alura, and all the frat boys were now gathered.

I smiled down at them.

“Yeah,” I said, “some libations would be fucking great.”

Chapter 21

The journey to the Stronghold of the Twin Spirits was one that was, thankfully, quite uneventful, though it took five days. For as long a stretch as I could remember, since setting foot in the Kingdom of Avalonia and its adjacent realms, I undertook a journey that was not fraught with peril from the outset.

Actually, that might not be entirely accurate.

A slim peril did loom for the duration of the voyage, in the form of getting alcohol poisoning. Everyone was celebrating like they had just come through some insane trial of fire and blood, a trial that they felt lucky to have survived at all. I couldn’t think why.

It was damned good to see all my friends again, and to have us all under one roof—or set of sails as the case might have been. We arranged things so that all those who had been in this thing from what might be called the start spent the voyage all on the same boat, as The Hellbringer was the largest and grandest vessel.

There was me, Bradley, Rick, Nigel, Damien, Cecilia, Alura, Mallory, and Janet, of course; my fellow students who had faced numerous unimaginable dangers at my side. Enwyn Emberskull, my very first magical acquaintance and crush was there too, alongside the Chaosbanes—Reginald, Mort, Leah, Igor, Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock, and Aunt Ruth.

Barry Chillgrave was there too, acting in the role as Isobel Galeflint’s first mate, although with all the ale that he spent his time sinking, it was a good thing that he wasn’t required to sink any ships. Chubbs, the Chaosbane’s werewolf ranch hand had sparked up a friendship with the other poltergeist sailor, Buttuck, and the two of them wiled away their time playing backgammon and drinking rum.

Idman Thunderstone spent much of his time staring out to sea, often accompanied by Janet. The old friends Madame Xel and Odette Scaleblade would periodically join them, making it their business to try and get the austere Idman to cut loose and do shots with them.

Because the weather in the Spectral Realm was exceedingly clement and sunny most of the time, Isobel simply ordered her crew to erect makeshift tents out of spare sailcloth for us to sleep under at night. With the amount of grog that everyone was drinking and the amount of partying that was going on, though, more often than not, I fell asleep in some unlikely spot on the ship, under the stars, listening to the sound of the waves hissing against the hull.

It did not take long to gather the news from everyone and hear the reports on what the different ships had done in the couple of days we had been apart. According to the frat boys, they had spent most of their time cruising around the islands and enjoying the sunshine.

“We only got into one spot of trouble, didn’t we, chaps?” Bradley said as we sat around the mainmast playing a few hands of cards on the evening of the third day.

“Hmm, do I sense a slight understatement there, Bradley?” I grinned as I slapped down a pair of burning towers to cover the pair of squealing pigs that Nigel had thrown onto the deck.

Bradley held his thumb and forefinger about a quarter of an inch apart.

“Ah, come on, friend,” Rick rumbled, taking a swig from his bucket-sized mug which, on closer inspection, might actually have been a bucket. “It wasn’t that bad.”

“Getting invited to dinner by island cannibals doesn’t rate as bad in your books, big boy?” Damien said incredulously.

Rick shrugged and gulped more mead.

“W-w-wait just a second,” Nigel said excitedly, “let’s clarify something here, we weren’t invited to dinner, we were invited for dinner.”

“Same thing, isn’t it?” I asked.

“No, no, no,” Nigel said, “we were quite literally invited for dinner, like, we were the course in between the fish and the dessert.”

I laughed. “You’re kidding me? You were actually lured into a cannibal camp and put on the menu?”

Nigel nodded his head in the affirmative.

“Bit clichéd, isn’t it?” I chuckled at the thought of the scene that must have played out. “How the hell didn’t you see that one coming, lads?”

“That was the problem, I think,” said Bradley. “It was so absurdly hackneyed that I don’t think any of us believed it was actually happening, you know?”

“It was just you guys on the island?” I asked, indicating all my fraternity brothers. “What about the rest of the crew?”

“We told them to hang back,” Damien said. “We wanted to set a good example sort of thing.”

“And, to be fair, friend,” Rick said slowly, lowering a pair of rutting minotaurs down on the discarded pile of cards, “stereotypes come from somewhere, don’t they?”

“And, in our defense, they weren’t actually cannibals—not proper ones,” said Nigel.

“No?” I said.

“Nah, they were zombies,” Damien said.

“Wrong, Damien,” Bradley said promptly, “they were flesh-eating ghouls.”

Damien snapped his fingers and pointed at Bradley. “That’s right, the haggard bastards were flesh-eating ghouls. I stand corrected.”

“My question,” Nigel said, scooping up the pile of cards with a look of disgust at losing the hand to a bunch of intellectual inferiors, “is what the devil is the difference when a bunch of the creeps are trying to marinade you and stuff lemons up your—”

Damien cut Nigel off with a gesture as I burst into laughter. “Nigel, I think I speak for all those present when I say that seeing you with your pants around your ankles and a ghoul trying to sodomize you with an assortment of citrus fruit once was most definitely enough,” the Fire Mage said. “There’s no need for us to relive that.”

Nigel lay the dove of ice down to restart the game. Rick followed with a fire goblin, and Bradley trumped him with the, apparently, unbeatable technicolor wizard card. This started an argument amongst Nigel, Rick, and Bradley, who were the only three among us five who knew how to play the game properly.

Rick jabbed an accusatory finger at Bradley. “You can’t play the technicolor wizard on the godsdamned ice goblin, friend.”

“You played the ice goblin, Rick,” Nigel said.

“What?” Rick said.

“You played the ice goblin,” Nigel repeated.

Rick nudged aside the technicolor wizard card and saw the fire-covered goblin beneath it.

“Hm,” he said.

Damien, chuckling while he did, made a motion as if he were pulling down a turtleneck jumper from his face. “Roll the foreskin down so you can see, dickhead.”

“Oh, shit!” Bradley clapped and covered his mouth.

Nigel’s brow furrowed and then a huge smile lit his features. “That is actually quite funny, Damien. Not to mention very, very humorous.”

It took me a long while to regain my breath, I was laughing so hard.

* * *

A pirate Disney castle. That is how the Stronghold of the Twin Spirits struck me when Isobel Galeflint’s ship, The Hellbringer, rounded a long spit of land and we caught sight of the fortress.

By that, I don’t mean it was like a pirate castle designed by Disney. Not some lame-ass thing that had been knocked up by their visual-effects teams for Pirates of the Caribbean and that would make a sweet toy for some six-year-old.

No. The edifice facing us, straddling a river that flowed out to the sea, looked like what the Disney castle would have looked like if Bartholomew Roberts had studied architecture instead of piracy.

The castle, the Stronghold, was an enormous keep of strangely glittering black rock, veined with white. It looked as if it had been constructed from volcanic glass and snow, adamantine, ice and silver. It was ringed by a curtain wall that looked about as scalable as the mountain, Annapurna. Inside, the imposing wall was cornered by round watchtowers that glimmered like black and white stalagmites.

“Within that curtain wall, or so I have heard it said,” Reginald Chaosbane commented as we approached the mouth of the river that the Stronghold straddled, “there are large courtyards. They will be just the place for us to train and gather those who are sympathetic to our cause.”

I managed to pull myself away from the sight of the spiky spires and Gothic-style windows and turned to face the Headmaster.

“You mean that all of the people here, all the renegades who made it to the ranch and decided to hop on these ships with us, they’re not all the mages who’ll join us?”

Reginald Chaosbane twirled his mustaches in a debonair and slightly dastardly way that I only hoped that I’d be able to emulate one day.

“No, Mr. Mauler,” he said. “No, mate. No. There are others who have taken an interest in what we are doing. Some of them—most of them—are keen on saving the Universal Magic and, consequentially, the Multiverse itself. This is a course of action that I don’t see so much as noble, as essential, don’t you think?”

I nodded briefly. “Multiverse goes kaput, and we’re all screwed, sir.”

“Was it Voltaire who said that?” the Headmaster said softly to himself.

“Sorry?” I said, unsure if I had heard him correctly.

“Nothing, nothing,” Reginald said, smiling amiably at me and pulling a thin flask from an inner jacket pocket. He smacked his lips and coughed a little cloud of orange vapor out into the air.

“For many, they care not for saving Universal Magic,” Reginald continued. “Instead, they imagine the downfall of the Arcane Council and the freeing of their puppet Queen, and this excites them. These folk cannot imagine nothingness, which is certainly what we’ll get if Universal Magic should die. You know, there are very few people who can actually imagine nothing. Most people imagine a plain color, black or white or deep blue. It’s quite the stretch to picture nothing at all.”

“Can you, sir?” I asked as Isobel steered The Hellbringer into the mouth of the river. She was at the head of the fleet of ships and led the way toward the enormous closed portcullis that blocked the seaward entrance to the Stronghold.

“Can I what, mate?” Reginald took another swig from his flask and offered it to me.

“Can you picture nothing?” I said.

“I don’t know.” The Headmaster ran a hand through his dark hair. “I’m not sure if I have ever seen nothing, so picturing it would be somewhat of a tax.”

I took a pull on the flask and tried not to give in to my knee-jerk reaction to spit the mouthful of liquor overboard. I swallowed with difficulty and felt my throat shrivel into a raisin.

As we drew closer to the Stronghold, I began to see just how imposing the central keep was. It was topped with a tower that was to towers what Agent 47 is to assassins. It was the most incredible piece of craftsmanship that I had ever seen; sheer-sided, black and silver veined, like obsidian shot through with mercury, and with a series of incredible arching windows that must have given one hell of a view across the sea. It must have risen a good five-hundred feet, so that the top of it was little more than a twinkling needle.

“On the very top of that highest tower is a private place.” Reginald Chaosbane looked up at the Stronghold with an unusually serious expression on his countenance. “There is a smaller plateau, according to what I’ve read in some of your parents’ journals, and that is where your mother and father would go to discuss the most important and secretive business.”

I didn’t say anything. It felt a little weird to suddenly be so close to a place that had been of such importance to the parents that I barely remembered or knew.

“Come to the front of the ship with me, Mr. Mauler,” Reginald Chaosbane, taking back the flask and stowing it into his coat. “I require your assistance in getting the front door open.”

“The front door?” I asked.

Reginald pointed at the gigantic and formidable portcullis that came down from the roof of the ship-sized arch and disappeared into the calmly flowing water of the river.

“That’s the front door?” I asked. “How the hell are we supposed to get that thing open? Magic?”

“No need for any of that type of exertion, my dear lad,” Reginald said. “Not when we have the key.”

I looked at him and raised my eyebrows. “You have the key?”

“No, you have the key,” Reginald said. “Or, to be more precise, you are the key.”

This was news to me. I said as much.

“Yes,” Reginald mused, “I can see why you might be confused. You’d imagine that if someone personified something as important as a key they would know about it, wouldn’t you? However, my dear cousin Igor and I were discussing it the other night, and we came to the conclusion that, whilst you have not always been the key, there can be no denying that your adventures and the path that you have trodden since gracing our world has turned you into a key.”

I had been drinking and partying for about four days straight by this point, so I could have been excused for feeling a little behind the Eightball just then. To gain a little time to consider what Reginald Chaosbane had just said, I countered with, “I think Igor might have been pulling your leg he was on his latest trip, sir.”

Reginald chuckled good-naturedly. “Oh, don’t you worry, Mr. Mauler. I am well aware that Igor is the sort of individual whose advice must come with a pinch, or more likely a bucket, of salt. Both of us know that he has the appearance of a broomstick that has been on the run from the law for about a month, and if his eyes were any further apart, he’d probably be classified as a herbivore, but that does not mean that sometimes he manages to speak sense.”

“I still don’t get how I could inadvertently become a key to a door that I only knew existed a week ago.”

Reginald’s dark, cunning eyes glittered. “I’m sure you do know, or could know, if you actually thought about it, mate.”

I stopped to consider this. Ran my mind back through everything that we had all been through. After little less than a minute of intense cogitation, the lightbulb flicked on.

“My staff,” I said.

The Headmaster of the Mazirian Academy beamed. “Ah, there are few things more satisfying than when the camouflage is pulled away and we see what was there all along.”

As we approached the portcullis, I asked Reginald, “Do I need to get my staff out and wave it around or some shit like that?”

“No, your parents’ magical arts were beyond such flamboyance and showing off, Mr. Mauler.”

It was just as he said.

As the prow of The Hellbringer was just about to nudge up against the solid metal of the portcullis, there was a deep rumble and crashing clank as hidden chains, powered by some thaumaturgical power, began to move and the portcullis went up.

Our ships passed through without incident, and Isobel had her crew throw lines and secure her galleon to a very well-constructed dock. The other ships behind us followed our lead and, before long, we were back on solid ground.

Reginald Chaosbane seemed to know where to go. He led the way from the docks, not giving any of us time to indulge in a bit of good, old-fashioned gawping. We headed toward a drawbridge that led into an open gate, flanked by two intimidating guard houses. The stone huts were empty of sentries now, of course, but I imagined that they probably hadn’t been back in my parents’ day. The timber gate was aged to the hardness of solid iron and carved with intricate symbols of the stars and the planets and constellations that I wouldn’t have recognized even if they had been earthly ones.

The whale host walked along a wide path that wended its way through a series of ornately carved gates and passageways which led under the walls, toward the center of the Stronghold. There were many statues of mages of different races in various poses. There was an ifrit mage in mid leap, an angelic mage with spread wings, a female dwarf with crossed arms, and a stern-faced cyclops dressed in a robe with an enormous scythe over his shoulder.

“Who are all these people?” I asked Reginald Chaosbane, not really expecting him to know, but guessing that he might have an idea.

“The fallen,” the Headmaster replied.

“Sounds about right,” grunted Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock, who was stumping along behind me. “Statues, bloody statues. Funny that they always go up when someone snuffs it.”

“Bloody Nora, you’re in a fine mood, aren’t you, Gorlbadock?” Aunt Ruth said dryly. “Nothing like a sea voyage to relax and refresh, they say.”

The matriarch of the Chaosbane clan batted her long lashes at me. “Don’t let him rob you of the appreciation of the culture of this place, Justin.”

“Bah!” old Gorlbadock said. “Culture! You know what else has culture? Yogurt. Culture forsooth!”

The path snaked through the sculptural maze of long dead War Mages and ended at another gate. This gate was made of gleaming silver, so bright that it acted like a mirror and reflected the light of the sun into our faces. As Reginald Chaosbane and myself approached, this shining gateway opened as it sensed the staff that I carried, within which the souls of my parents resided.

We passed through and found ourselves in the middle bailey. In short time, the large open area was filled with people, many of whom I didn’t recognize from the gathering back at the Ranch.

“Who are all these people?” I asked Leah.

The ditzy pink-haired Chaosbane shrugged. “I can’t even attempt to tell you, honey-doodle.”

As I looked out over the expanse of the middle bailey, the scale of what I was seeing impressed itself upon me.

“These are a bunch of other armies who’ve shown up here, Headmaster,” I said.

Reginald Chaosbane cocked an eye at me. “That does seem to be the case, doesn’t it?”

“I agree with Justin,” Nigel said. “This looks t-t-to me to be what is basically known as a weapon count.”

“Spot on, Mr. Windmaker, spot on!” Reginald Chaosbane said. “Bravo.”

“You mean these are armies?” I asked.

“Parts of armies, certainly,” Reginald said.

“Yes, parts of armies,” Mort said, appearing at my shoulder in his silent manner. Mort was one of those bounty hunters who knocked his targets off without them ever being aware that he was even in the same room as them. “Only parts. There isn’t any leader out there who is rash enough to send in their whole army, I wouldn’t think.”

“Quite so, cousin,” said Reginald. “There was no possible way I could have done it without you, Mr. Mauler. The vast majority wouldn’t have recalled the Twin Spirits unless they were to hold your staff, but they knew something wasn’t right. And that it had to be righted. So they came here.”

“The Twin Spirits weren’t really just two people, two powerful mages, Justin,” Madame Xel said, putting her arm around me and engulfing me in her intoxicating perfume. “It was a movement too. And while most folk won’t remember the names of Zenidor and Istrea, they remember that they started something. Salvation of Universal Magic.”

“It’s true,” said Enwyn. “There is a call in their souls, and they have responded.”

I looked out at the glittering shapes in the courtyard now. They were men and women of all different kinds—mages dressed in every kind of battle uniform I could have cared to imagine—moving in fluid formation. Working their way through what looked like designated drill moves.

They were training already. Sparring and practicing unarmed combat.

If I had doubted or not appreciated just how serious things were, then I doubted no longer.

“Do you think that any of these people coming here are suspicious?” I asked Reginald Chaosbane quietly as the rest of the renegades piled into the middle bailey behind us.

“Suspicious? No,” Reginald Chaosbane replied. “A nun doing squats in a cucumber field is suspicious. I think all we need to worry about, to be aware of, are the different motivating factions that are driving each of our allies. That all of us seek to overthrow the Arcane Council is beyond question, mate, but why those among us want to do that varies.”

In all that glitter of swords and armor and sparkling spells, there was one group of War Mages that glittered more than the rest.

“The Gemstone Elementals are here!” I said, looking around for Alura.

Alura stepped out from behind the broad expanse of Rick’s back and said, “Well, of course! I sent word to my father via homing phoenix the night before we were the guests of Isobel. You don’t suppose that he would ignore an invitation from me, do you?”

Even as we were speaking, one of the warriors at the front of the squad of Gemstone Elementals detached itself and walked over to us. He was almost ten feet tall, pure diamond in appearance, sculpted like a zirconia Doctor Manhattan and looked to weigh about half a ton.

Not an easy dude to forget.

It was the Prophet King of the Gemstone Elementals, Alura’s father.

Reginald Chaosbane stepped out to meet the boss dog of the Gemstone Elementals, and the two of them exchanged pleasantries.

“It’s the calm before the storm, Chaosbane,” the Prophet King rumbled smoothly. “All those who want to put their differences aside to save the Universal Magic are here.”

“Yes,” Reginald Chaosbane said, rubbing his hands together and staring about happily, “there’s certainly been a ripping turn out for the big day, hasn’t there, Your Majesty.”

Reginald took the Prophet King, as Alura’s father was known, by the arm and gently led him away from our rebel group. As he went, he motioned that Isobel Galeflint and I should follow him.

When we were out of earshot of everyone else, Reginald said, “I love your enthusiasm to save the Universal Magic, Your Majesty, and you know that I respect your prowess more than most of the other leaders that have gathered here…”

“But?” the Prophet King asked.

“But, unfortunately,” Reginald said, “before we can get down to the nitty-gritty of the thing, there is something that we must do first.”

The Prophet King’s brow creased as he frowned. “And what is that, Headmaster?”

“War,” Isobel Galeflint said.

The Prophet King gave the Pirate Queen a dubious look.

“It’s true, I’m afraid,” Reginald Chaosbane said. “We’re going to have to take down the Arcane Council a peg of seven, or at least cow it enough so that we have space to save the world, before we embark on the greater mission.”

“But why?” the Prophet King rumbled. “Surely the biggest bunch of fools or government bureaucrats can see—”

“Ah, ye see, you’ve just gone and repeated yourself there, Your Majesty,” Isobel said. “Giant fucking fools and government bureaucrats, they’re one in the same ain’t they?”

The Prophet King said nothing, but I thought I saw a sparkling smile twitch the corner of his lips.

“Things are heating up far faster than anyone could have expected with regards to the leaking of the Universal Magic,” Chaosbane explained. “And, to make sure that we are not interrupted or buggered at a key moment, we need to make sure the Council is brought to heel.”

“There’s no time for pussyfooting diplomacy,” Isobel said.

“This is, as my distinguished nautical colleague here says, a time for action,” finished Reginald Chaosbane.

“And I assume that this Earthling is to play some role in that?” the Prophet King said, indicating me with a nod of his head.

“Indeed, I believe so,” said Reginald.

“Unsurprising, given who his parents are,” the Prophet King rumbled from on high. He bent down slightly to peer into my face with his mystical gold and white eyes. “What is surprising though, is why he hasn’t taken on my daughter as a wife.”

That caught me off-balance and no mistake. I was so blindsided that all I could do was stare dumbly while Isobel sniggered behind the Prophet King’s back.

“Well?” the giant crystal figure asked mildly.

To save myself from sinking through the stone floor and down into the center of the planet with embarrassment, I said, “I think we should save the Multiverse before we start planning weddings, don’t you, your Majesty?”

The Prophet King considered this. “A fair argument,” he said. “In that case, I suppose that you have a scheme in mind, son of Istrea and Zenidor?”

“I think I know how we can save the Universal Magic,” I said, “but to do it, it’s imperative that we get some more Creation Mages. Four, to be precise. Maybe more if those first four aren’t willing participants.”

“Why the fuck is that?” asked the Pirate Queen.

“Because we need more Creation Mages so that they and I can work spells together and create more magic,” I replied.

“And where are we supposed to attain these Creation Mages?” Isobel scoffed.

“That, I am hoping, should be relatively straightforward, if not easy,” Reginald Chaosbane replied critically.

“How so?” the Pirate Queen asked.

“Apparently, the Arcane Council, using Queen Hagatha’s authority, has been rounding them up and keeping them in the capital under lock and key.” Reginald smiled as if he hadn’t just said, in a roundabout way, that we were going to have to break back into the most highly guarded area in Avalonia.

Isobel’s mouth turned into a flat line.

“So, you’re basically telling us that we’re going to have to find a way to enter Manafell, find these Creation Mages, free them, and then…”

Reginald turned to me. There was a knowing little smile peeking out from under the immaculate mustache.

“And what does come next, Mr. Mauler?” he asked innocently. “I forget.”

I gave Reginald a look of such stoniness that it could have been used to carve a full-scale replica of the Lincoln Memorial.

Avoiding the piercing gold and white eyes of Alura’s dad, I said, “Well, I guess then I’m going to have to fuck them, sir.”

I glanced at the Prophet King and saw the father in him crack its knuckles.

I gave him what I hoped was a winning smile.

“Don’t worry, Your Majesty,” I assured him, “it’s all for the good of the Multiverse.”

End of Book 7

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Dante King is an author of Men’s Adventure fiction in various flavors. His books involve strong male protagonists who know what they want and do what’s required to get it.

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