Creation Mage 8

War Mage Academy 8

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

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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

Chapter 22

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Immortal Swordslinger

Bone Lord

Chapter 1

“I’ve got to say, friend,” said the burly Earth Elemental Rick Hammersmith, lying on his back in the middle of the courtyard where I had just bowled his giant ass over, “that tower of your parents really is something.”

I held out my hand and helped my big friend to his feet. I looked up, my gaze following the path that Rick’s bright green eyes were taking.

The Stronghold of the Twin Spirits was a mighty, awe-inspiring edifice with two mountainous buttresses that straddled a river like the legs of some monumentally massive and stony golem. The river wended its way through the fortress, through a colossal portcullis, and flowed out to the sea.

The actual castle part of the Stronghold was an enormous keep of strange, almost opaque obsidian-like rock. The structure drew the eye and held it in a fist of volcanic glass mixed with snow and ice, mercury and adamantine rock. To call the castle imposing would not really have begun to do the place justice. It made Orthanc look like a sandcastle—and not even a good sandcastle at that.

With sides so sheer and smooth that I doubted even the most suicidal and sticky-fingered gecko would have been able to find a purchase on them, the tower rose up and up and up. It was black and silver veined—a color scheme I was beginning to see as synonymous with chaos magic—like obsidian shot through with mercury. It contained 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 sliver high up in the heavens.

The Stronghold was, at the end of the day, the most incredible piece of craftsmanship that I had ever seen.

Inside, the staggering and dramatic wall was cornered by round watchtowers that glimmered with a ghostly silver eldritch light. Black and white stalagmite fortifications sat on the very boundary between man-made and natural so that I couldn’t say with any real confidence which one they might be.

All in all, my mom and dad’s old stomping ground, their mage equivalent of the Little Rascals’ clubhouse, looked like the Disney castle might have looked like had old Walt and his design team had more of a penchant for strong acid and gothic architecture.

“Yeah,” Rick rumbled again. “Yeah, it sure is… big.”

I gave a little snort and slapped the solid islander on the shoulder. “I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this, Rick, but your powers of description never cease to dazzle me.”

Rick glanced up at the mammoth construction once more. “Well, it is big.”

“A troll is big, Rick,” said Nigel Windmaker, one of my other frat brothers and a Wind Mage. “This place is… vast. Titanic. Colossal. Epic.”

Rick shrugged non-committedly. “Potato tomato,” he said in his deep bass voice as he wandered off to help himself to a sandwich from a nearby table.

Damien Davis, Fire Mage and free-running extraordinaire, who had been sitting on the sideline of the open practice arena, smacked his palm into his forehead.

Nigel, who was as smart as a brain omelet and couldn’t stand to see any of his friends travel through life under any cloud of ignorance of any kind, opened his mouth to correct Rick.

“The saying goes, ‘po-tay-to, po-tah-to’, Rick,” our resident bookworm and genius said kindly.

Rick turned from the table he had been perusing and raised a big eyebrow at Nigel. Then, he held up a sandwich in his meaty hand.

“Po-tay-to, to-mah-to,” he said exaggeratedly. “Also, there’s ham, lettuce, and braised magpie in this one. And lots of satyr sauce too.”

Nigel went red, and Bradley Flamewalker burst out laughing.

It had been a full ten days since I, and all those who had been involved in our little adventurous excursion into the Spectral Realm, had been led by Admiral Isobel Galeflint to the Stronghold of the Twin Spirits. We had traveled for five relaxed days, after the great sea battle we had undergone with the forces of the Arcane Council, before arriving at my parents’ old mustering station, deep within the strange place that was the Spectral Realm.

When we arrived, we met a whole host of gathering forces from all over the Kingdom of Avalonia and beyond. There had been representatives of all sorts of creatures, magic-users, and societies, who were sympathetic to the cause being championed by Reginald Chaosbane—namely, to disrupt the hold that the Arcane Council seemed to have over Queen Hagatha and save the Universal Magic.

Most notable of those was the Prophet King of the Gemstone Elementals. He had not only brought a formidable contingent of his Gemstone warriors, but also dropped the bomb that he expected me, Justin Mauler, to make a wife of his daughter, Alura.

From the moment that we had stepped foot into the Stronghold, everything had become a blur of activity. There had been planning, mustering, organizing, designating, and all the other boring logistical items that they always make a montage of in the movies, out of fear that audiences will fall into comas if they don’t.

Happily, things had settled down over the last couple of days. I, along with most of my close companions, had returned to the more pressing and enjoyable business of training, sparring, and practicing spells.

There was a whole group of us—those who had been in this thing from the beginning and those who might have been considered the key players in this drama we were living—making use of an inner courtyard. Outside, in the peripheral parade grounds, other soldiers and mages were being put through their paces by their respective commanders. I could hear the clash of weapons on armor and the fizz and crackle of spells.

I had been surprised by just how many mages had flocked to Reginald Chaosbane’s summons.

When I had mentioned this out loud, Madame Xel had taken me under her seductively perfumed wing and said, “The Twin Spirits weren’t really just two people, two powerful mages, Justin, you have to realize that.”

“What do you mean?” I had asked, frowning slightly.

“As incredibly talented and powerful as your parents were, the Twin Spirits was a movement too.”

“Like the Resistance?” I blurted before I could stop myself. I had been getting better the longer I had lived in this supernatural world, but every now and again, some irresistible Earthly comparison popped into my mind which I couldn’t help but voice.

Madame Xel had given me a blank stare, and I had signaled for her to ignore me and carry on.

“You shouldn’t be surprised that there are so many here,” she had continued. “Take comfort in the fact that all these brave mages and folk from many different worlds can be trusted to lend you their support.”

I wiped sweat from my forehead with the back of my arm, puffed out my cheeks, and grinned around at my assembled friends. Along with my fraternity brothers, most of my other close crew were all there.

I glanced over to see Cecilia Chillgrave, Enwyn Emberskull, Janet Thunderstone, and Alura, the Gemstone Princess. They were all sitting together in the sunny courtyard.

The sensuous Madame Xel was deep in conversation with her gypsy-looking friend, Odette Scaleblade. The former priestess and fugitive, Mallory Entwistle, sat nearby listening attentively to the conversation of the succubus and the dragonkin.

Isobel Galeflint was strolling backward and forward, twirling a cutlass around in a distracted and thoughtful fashion. At her heels padded none other than Felicity, the Changeling, who was currently inhabiting her sleek and deadly looking sabertooth tiger form.

The inimitable Chaosbanes were, mostly, all present, except for the saucy Aunt Ruth and the cantankerous Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock. Leah, Mort, Igor, and Reginald were all on their feet and running through an absurd collection of Swedish exercises.

“It is big though, isn’t it, ye can’t deny it,” Isobel said to me. The Pirate Queen was an exceptionally and ravishingly beautiful woman, even in the company of all those other ten out of ten hotties sitting around the courtyard. For me, her main allure came from the way that she held herself with so much poise. She was so sure of herself and wasn’t afraid to show how contemptuous she might find someone.

“I guess you can’t deny it,” I said, hefting my staff in my hand and surreptitiously running my eyes over the sexy-ass pirate.

Although she had bright crimson, wavy hair that fell around her face in a very fetching devil-may-care way, there was something undeniably Carmen Electra-like about her—and I’d always had time for a picture of Carmen Electra when I was a younger man. She was dressed today in her usual leather outfit that was part black and gold brocaded admiral’s jacket, part bikini, part lingerie, and part dominatrix bondage outfit.

“I sure would like to know what’s at the top of that tower, though,” Isobel said. “A mast like that would have one hell of a crow’s nest.”

“I told you last week when we first got here, Isobel,” I said. “On the very top of that highest tower is a private place, a secret little plateau that only my mom and dad were allowed access to. It’s where they would go to discuss their most important and secretive business.”

Isobel dropped me a lascivious wink, the sort of wink that should have had my belt unbuckling itself.

“I’m just saying that there must be a hell of a view waiting up there,” she said. “You better promise that if you ever head up there, that you’ll take me too. And I’ll promise to make the view just that little bit more exceptional.”

“Less chatty, more fighty,” Damien said from where he was lounging in a chair on the sidelines.

“Hey man,” I said, turning my attention to the Los Angeles-raised Fire Mage, “I’m ready when you are.”

Damien waved a dismissive hand. “Thanks, but no thanks. I’m still smarting after last night. We may have bested those ifrits in the end, but those motherfuckers know how to throw a punch!”

“Not to mention a Fireball,” I chuckled as I recalled the scrap that me and the frat boys had got into on the previous evening. It had been nothing serious. We had been drinking in an al fresco makeshift bar Isobel Galeflint’s more enterprising crew members had set up. There’d been nothing in it really, just a clashing of testosterone and alcohol. Damien had run his mouth a little too freely after more shots of ghoul venom than was strictly advisable. He’d then turned into a fist magnet for a couple of ifrits drinking on the table next to us.

“That’s right!” Damien said with a reminiscent smile on his dial. “I remember that now! That sobered Nigel up, didn’t it? Having his pants set on fire like that.”

I laughed and turned my attention back to the rest of the crew.

“Is there anyone else interested in exchanging a little bit of friendly magic?” I asked.

Reginald Chaosbane stepped forward.

“I accept your challenge, Mr. Mauler, mate,” he said. He was hopping from one foot to the other and, as I watched, he performed a series of shadow boxing techniques that would have been cutting edge, maybe, in the 1920s.

“Uh, we’re just practicing though, right, sir?” I asked.

“Of course, of course, of course!” Reginald said. “And, seeing as we are practicing, we shall practice unfairly—imitating life as it all too often is.”

He was dressed in his usual black leather pants, billowing shirt, and piratical boots. Due to the heat slowly building in the courtyard, he had removed his faded crimson coat. He was also wearing a bandana around his head, his longish hair pushed back from his face.

“Mortimer!” Reginald said as he stretched this way and that, like a caricature of a gymnast. “Igor!”

There was a muffled snorting grunt from over where Reginald had sprung up from. Leah had just dug her elbow into the side of Igor, who appeared to have nodded off under the shade of an umbrella.

“What!” he screamed sharply. “What? Where the hell am I? What? Oh… right. How can I help?”

Leah pointed to where Reginald and I stood staring at Igor. “You’re wanted for a friendly magical mix-up, cousin,” said the pink-haired female member of the Chaosbane clan.

“Ah, yes, of course,” Igor said. “Not a worry, not a worry. Coming, Reggie!”

Igor heaved his shabby self out of the chair, with a little help from the tall, pale figure of Mortimer, and ambled over to us. As the pair of family members approached, I noticed a fine stream of bright yellow powder emanating from one of the pockets of Igor’s ubiquitous shabby duster coat.

“What are we going for here?” I asked. “A little two-on-two? Because, if we are, I’d like to shotgun Mort… or you, Reginald.”

Igor looked blearily around, as if expecting to see some more people.

“Oh,” he said dryly. “Oh, that’s nice, I don’t think. What are you trying to say, Justin, eh? You don’t trust my skills as a war mage?”

“No, no, I know you’re a capable fighter, Igor,” I said. “I’m not saying that at all.”

Igor looked mollified.

“I’m saying that I don’t trust you to remember who you are, what team you’re on, what you’re doing here, or a combination of all three of those things,” I finished.

Igor’s bloodshot eyes narrowed. Then he hiccuped. “Well, yes, I suppose that is a justifiable point, old boy, now that you mention it.”

Reginald motioned for Igor to be quiet and then said to me, “I trust, Mr. Mauler, that you recall what I told you about why all the assembled mages and warriors have joined us here?”

I nodded. “I do, sir.”

“And?” Reginald prompted me, just as if we were back at the Academy and he was taking a class.

“You said that they could not imagine nothing, so they imagined the downfall of the Arcane Council and the freeing of the puppet Empress. You seemed to think that this notion excited them, sir.”

Reginald Chaosbane pulled one of his many flasks out from one of his voluminous sleeves and took a long, slow swig.

“Blimey, but I do have a way with words when it comes to dramatic moments, don’t I?” he said musingly.

“Uh, yes, I suppose you do, sir,” I said dutifully.

“Quite, quite!” Reginald said, slapping me on the shoulder. “Excellent powers of recall, that man! Tell me, did I mention how very few people there are who actually can imagine nothing?”

“Uh, yes,” I said, wondering where the fuck Reginald was going with this line of enquiry. “You said that most people imagine a plain color—black or white or deep blue. You said it’s quite the stretch to picture nothing at all, sir.”

“I always imagine a nice tranquil purple, almost a lilac, when I imagine nothing,” said Mort politely.

“Well, that’s because you’re such an ass, Mortimer—the family’s been saying it for years,” Igor said blithely.

Mort, one of the most infamous and feared bounty hunters in all the Avalonian Kingdom, sighed and shuffled his feet.

“What’s your point, sir?” I asked, directing the question at the headmaster.

“My point?” Reginald said. “My point… Well, my point is, my potent Creation Mage friend, that you should try and keep that same nothing at the forefront of your mind—as a reminder and a warning. A warning of what will befall all things and everyone in this whole wide, wonderful, buggered up universe of ours if we should fail. It should be a reminder of how a true war mage should operate—caring nothing for their individual fate. Keep your mind full of that calming lilac that Mort pictures when he thinks of nothing, Mr. Mauler. Do not fear. Press on, press on.”

“That sounded very Yoda-like, sir,” I said.

“Oh, that little green chap!” Igor said, blinking like an owl. “Yes, it did a bit, didn’t it? Very mystical. You know, of all the earthlings that I’ve ever met, all of them seem to think that he’s nothing more than a fictitious character, but I could have sworn that I was down the pub not so long ago and—”

“Zip those lips, cousin,” Reginald said amiably. “Let us practice. Oblivion for all beckons.”

“Well, I’ll tell you one thing for free,” Igor said as he rolled up the sleeves of his duster. “No matter how much time passes or how long it takes us to achieve our goals, no matter what insanity takes place in the interim, there are some things I’ll simply never allow to be assigned to oblivion: fifty-year-old yeti-made whisky and the powdered roots of the humble crowcane plant.”

“Also known as ‘pantygrease’ in the lexicon of the street, I believe,” Reginald said.

“That’s right,” Igor said.

I fired off the first spell, a Blazing Bolt that I hoped would frazzle the ends of Igor’s broomhead mustache and stop his babbling for five seconds.

As it was, Igor somehow deflected the Blazing Bolt and sent it careening back at me, transformed into the shape of a mid-sized flaming bat with obvious anger issues. I dove to the side and conjured a Flame Barrier in the shape of a spinning circular saw blade hanging in the air. The bat passed through the blade, and both spells dissipated in a violent shower of magenta sparks.

“This isn’t bat country, Igor!” Reginald exclaimed. “Where the hell did that spell come from, you strange and twisted individual?”

Igor shrugged and pointed at Mort, “My goodness,” he said, “I do so love a juggler.”

I noticed a blur of liquid silver out of the corner of my eye. I threw myself to the side once more, making use of my Metamorphosis spell, so that I was partly turned into a Gemstone Elemental, essentially taking on a magical exoskeleton.

It was a good thing that I took this defensive measure, as Mort used his curious brand of Chaosbane Chaos magic to conjure knives out of the air and send them spinning toward me. My newly hardened skin deflected the blades away, and they vanished in puffs of steam.

I sent a couple of Frost Shards at Igor, who screeched as they perforated his duster and pinned him to the stone flags. Then I used a burst of Flame Flight, which propelled me over a scintillating attack of fluttering, rippling magical crossbow bolts from Mort, and turned a nice full front flip in mid-air. As I hung twenty feet above the deck, I dropped a couple of Magma Bombs down toward Mort, and then rustled up a Tundra Tempest and aimed it at Reginald, beefing it up with all the mana that I could spare.

The Magma Bombs detonated in satisfying twin explosions that sent liquid magma flying in all directions. They forced Mort to flip and spin with the grace of an acrobat out of harm’s way, his Franciscan monk-style brown robes whirling about him. The Tundra Tempest—a spell that summoned a lightning storm that rained icicle spears and concealed the caster from view in a dense fog—hit Reginald Chaosbane like a ton of meteorological bricks.

Or it would have done, had the man not simply clicked his fingers and conjured a swirling, twirling umbrella crafted of pure Chaos magic above his head. The lightning and icicles came raining and shooting down at him, but the umbrella absorbed everything.

I landed with a bone-jarring impact twelve yards away and cursed. For a moment there, I’d thought I’d got him. When the spell had run its course, the umbrella folded shut with a snap, and Reginald casually gestured toward me. The umbrella elongated and then shot at me like a whaler’s harpoon, whining as it closed the gap between us in the blink of an eye.

To counter this spell, I summoned my undead wolverines, in the space of a thought. The four creatures—made flesh and blood here, in the Spectral Realm—threw themselves into the way of the projectile. They were skewered neatly, one after the other, like a goddamn kebab, and took the speed out of the umbrella harpoon so that I was able to step aside.

There was some appreciative clapping from the sidelines, and I distinctly heard Janet Thunderstone give a little whoop of encouragement.

“Go get ‘em, darling!” Cecilia yelled in her aristocratic elven voice.

Igor, who had managed to extricate himself from my Frost Shards spell by slicing through his own coat, took a low and earnest bow.

Using my Telekinesis spell, I hit him right in the ass with a table I flung at him from the sidelines using nothing but my mind.

Igor yelled out in dismay as the wooden table smacked into his butt and sent him sprawling. Rick let out a cry of dismay like a wounded hippopotamus as the sandwich selection that had been sitting on the table went flying.

The crowd of my assembled colleagues cheered and laughed as Igor went tumbling over in a shower of broken wood. I was unable to bask in their adulation for long because Mort had run at me and struck out with a scimitar that he had conjured from nothing.

I blocked the thrust with my staff—a vector that was, in fact, three vectors in one. Mort’s magical scimitar burst into fragments of greasy black and silver molten metal at the impact. Taken aback by the unexpected rupture of his sword, the bounty hunter took a step back. I capitalized on his hesitation by ramming my staff into his stomach and doubling him over.

Mort let out a low wheeze, but instinctively grabbed my vector to try and bring me within grappling range. I was hoping he would do this—I could cast my Leech spell and my staff would do the rest.

Mortimer already had the complexion of a zinc-dipped polar bear, but he paled even further as my mana and energy-draining curse took effect. As his mana left him, it entered me and filled me with fresh vim and vigor.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t fully capitalize on this, as Reginald Chaosbane whipped his cousin away from my staff like he had hooked him with an invisible giant fishing line.

Mort stumbled back and fell on his ass, momentarily out of the fight. I would have loved to put either Mort or Igor out of the action more permanently—it was the smart thing to do and would have reduced the odds against me.

I knew, though, that such a tactic was not to be. Reginald was not going to let that happen. He was a man who had crafted a reputation and legend from making the most of every little advantage. I had seen the man in battle and had been reminded obliquely of watching the surf smash against the shore.

I always imagined that his frustrated enemies didn’t know which they identified with more—the waves, raging against the immovable stone and sand beachhead that was Reginald Chaosbane, or the rocks themselves, which had to sit there and take an absolute beating without being able to defend themselves. Of course, most of the time Reginald Chaosbane’s enemies or opponents probably only had to face this internal conundrum for a very brief period before he blasted them into little wisps of nothingness.

This, seeing as I was sparring with the man now, was not a comforting thought.

Hoping to buy myself some more time to use a Paralyzing Zap on either Igor or Mortimer, I summoned a Frostfire Golem.

The creature was exactly as you might imagine it to be: a nine-foot tall elemental humanoid capable of using Fire and Frost magics. In the right circumstances—which were often the wrong circumstances for whoever it was you were fighting—the Frostfire Golem could cause about as much trouble as a bull with rectum full of TNT in a china shop.

“Oh, jolly good, jolly good!” Reginald Chaosbane said enthusiastically when the Frostfire Golem appeared and started lumbering toward him.

Without paying me the slightest bit of further attention, like a kid who’d been distracted by the sound of the ice-cream truck, Reginald turned to face the oncoming monster. He put one foot in front of the other and adopted a classic pugilist stance, his fists raised in front of his face.

“I warn you, giant fiery mate!” Reginald bellowed at the advancing figure, brandishing his fists. “I warn you, these are my dogs, but unfortunately, they don’t have names! This means that I can’t call them back once I let them off the leash!”

Unsurprisingly, the golem did not so much as pause in its step.

“Very well, sir,” Reginald said as I turned my attention to Igor, “prepare to be planted like a gods-damn Christmas tree!”

“Yeah, cousin, fistbump the shit out of that thing’s face!” Leah called from the sideline.

I couldn’t resist—even as I was aiming Igor up with a Storm Bolt—chancing a quick glance at Reginald to see what he was about to do.

The Headmaster of the Mazirian Academy still had his fists raised, but as the Frostfire Golem got to within ten yards, a shimmering pair of ghostly boxing gloves appeared in between them. Confronted with this new target, the Frostfire golem bunched its own massive fists so that they burst into orange fire.

There were some appreciative cheers and “oohs” and “aahs” from the spectators, some of whom had acquired beers from somewhere.

The golem swung a thunderous haymaker at the levitating gloves, but Reginald Chaosbane danced them out of the range, then stepped in and clocked the massive creature square in the laughing gear with a tasty hook. Whatever Chaos magic spell Chaosbane had used to create the gloves, it must’ve been a good one. The golem’s icy jaw was ripped right off its face and sent shattering against the flagstones some yards away.

There was a deal of whistling and stamping from Cecilia, Enwyn, Janet, Alura, Madame Xel, Odette Scaleblade, Mallory Entwistle, Leah, and Isobel Galeflint. Even the sabertooth changeling got in on the action and let out a spine-tingling roar of delight at the punch.

“Let’s get ready to rumble!” Damien stood up on his chair and punched a fist into the air.

With the cries of the spectators ringing in my ears, I blasted Igor off his feet once more with my Storm Bolt and sent him rolling into Mort so that they got all tangled up.

Turning my attention to Reginald, I deployed a Lightning Skink and swiftly followed it up with an Arcane Mine that I attached to the back of the Lightning Skink with a little bit of Telekinesis.

It was the navy using dolphins strapped with mines to blow up ships rumor that gave me the idea. Sure, it wasn’t the most humane and friendly way to treat a Lightning Skink, but the creature was constructed from pure magic, and when it was killed or destroyed, it simply returned as pure magic from whence it had come.

The Lightning Skink shot straight toward Reginald Chaosbane while Mort tried to disentangle himself from a panicking and flustered Igor. It moved so smoothly, it was like watching light run down the reflective side of a car as it passed. A fast, sleek, magical beastie killing machine.

Just as it was about to launch itself at Reginald, the boxing war mage scooted his gloves out of the way of another thunderous blow from the golem, and reached out with one of them.

One of the eldritch gloves picked the Lightning Skink up by the scruff of its neck and held it in midair, right in front of the Frostfire golem as it pulled its fist back in readiness for another meteoric punch.

At the same time, Reginald made a gesture in the air with his real hand, which was mimicked by the ghostly boxing glove hanging in the air.

As the Frostfire golem’s fist crashed forward into the back of the Lightning Skink, a swirling black and silver pool erupted into the air between Reginald and the two magical creatures.

That’s a shield or reflector, I thought, a nanosecond before I threw myself backward.

The Frostfire Golem’s fist smacked into the Lightning Skink, precisely where I had placed the Arcane Mine on its back.

The Arcane Mine was an adhesive charged mine that dealt Storm and Earth magic damage. It went off, in the middle of the practice courtyard, like a gas explosion in a compost factory taking place during the mother of all lightning storms.

Earth chunks flew in all directions—all directions but one. The lightning bolts and earth clods that should have been engulfing the Headmaster merely dissipated into a pleasant scented steam as they touched his strange half-liquid half-gas shield.

The rest of the explosion went more or less to form, blasting outward and ripping the Lightning Skink and Frostfire Golem to pieces. The two creatures were utterly destroyed, vanishing in twin bursts of greasy thaumaturgical smoke.

I covered my head as smaller bits of earth rained down around me. Not far away, Igor yelped as a small tendril of Storm magic grounded itself right up his ass.

I was relatively unscathed, apart from the ringing in my ears. I hadn’t really expected my ploy to work. I mean, this was Reginald Chaosbane we were talking about here, not some greenhorn from the Academy. If it had worked, I would have killed Reginald Chaosbane, but the regeneration runes Igor had drawn in the courtyard a few days back would have returned him in one piece, albeit painfully.

Igor made his move and fired a series of twisting, morphing, grapefruit-sized cannonball-like projectiles toward me. They moved like globs of mercury through the air, wobbling as they shot toward me at about fifty miles per hour.

Holding my ground, I conjured another Flame Barrier and molded it into a large concave lens, almost like a massive satellite dish. Igor’s spells hit the lens, spitting iridescent sparks of brightest silver as they shot around the inside curve of the bowl and rocketed back out toward the stunned Rune Mage. As they flew back toward him, I injected the Chaos Magic with a little burst of something special: just a dab of my Crystalize spell, which turned them solid and fixed their states.

The altered projectiles pelted toward Igor, who readied himself and raised his hands in a kung-fu pose, as if he was about to karate chop the fuck out of them.

And that, right then, was when I felt the tug and release of something indefinable running its fingers down the chalkboard of my soul.

My concentration was stolen away for a full three seconds, and my mind drifted.

I blinked and came back to myself with a frown, just in time to see Igor’s own altered magic smack into his guts, one missile after another, and bowl the poor bastard off his feet so hard that he skipped across the flagstones like a rock across a river.

“Igor!” Leah cried from the sideline, but I was already running toward the felled Chaosbane.

I reached him, just as Reginald arrived next to me. I squatted down and rolled Igor onto his back.

“Ow,” he breathed wheezily through his unbelievably tangled mustache. “I think I broke my shit…”

Mort arrived on the scene and began poking and prodding Igor with the confidence of a man who knows where each individual bone is located because he’s had to break every single one of them at some point in his career.

“Nothing broken,” he said, while Igor squirmed and tried not to giggle through groans of pain. “You’re as fit as a fiddle, cousin.”

“I’d hate to own whatever that fiddle is,” Bradley quipped from the back of the group that had gathered around the prostrate form of Igor.

“I heard that,” Igor grumbled, his hands clutching his stomach. “And may I make the suggestion that you bugger off and go and graze on your mother’s ass hair, Mr. Flamewalker?”

I heard Nigel choke with laughter somewhere out of sight. “That’s your dad, Bradley.”

“Is not,” Bradley shot back.

“Good to hear that you’re all right, cousin,” Leah said through a mouthful of the clove-scented smoke from one of her thin, black cigarettes. “Although, perhaps with these regeneration runes, maybe someone should off you and have you return back to us?”

“I’d say that’s a terrible idea,” Igor groaned. “I’ll be right as rain in a moment.” He groaned again, this time making a theatrical moan. “Maybe a few moments,” he added.

“Man, you’re such a drama queen,” I said, with a theatrical roll of the eyes. “Here, let me try something.”

I reached into my depleted mana pool and channeled my Blessed Zephyr spell. It had been a spell that I had most recently unlocked after doing the horizontal hustle with the Holy Mage, Mallory Entwistle. The charm allowed me to cast a Holy wind over an individual or group of allies, healing them of their minor wounds and bolstering their strength.

I felt my mana levels dip. A warm, lavender-scented breeze filtered through my friends’ legs and wrapped itself like a shawl around Igor in an almost visible way. The air seemed to sparkle with freshness. Igor sighed as his mustache rustled contentedly this way and that.

“Ooooh, that is very pleasant,” he sighed. “Like soaking in a warm bath… or hitting a generous pipe of freshly dried spotted snakeberry leaves.”

After a few seconds, I cut the mana flow. “I’m glad you enjoyed it. Judging by the moronic smile under that womb broom, you’re feeling better. But, if you’d be so good to answer my question: why didn’t you try to block it?”

“Why don’t you… make like a tree and go and self-pollinate yourself?” Igor grumbled, with a touch of the old Chaosbane wit. His eyelids looked heavy after the healing spell.

“I mean it,” I said. “Why didn’t you block it? You just stood there and took it like a chump.”

“I did try and stop it,” Igor said, an edge of dismayed disbelief to his voice. “I bloody well did try and stop it. I should’ve been able to too. But… I felt something, something that put me off my step, put me off my game, you know.”

I nodded. I had thought that too. I too had felt something run through me—and not just through me, but through the stones under my feet, through the very air around me. I had felt a vibration in the very fabric of the Spectral Realm.

“Reggie?” Mortimer said, in his incongruously calm and polite tone, which did not match his reputation as being one of the most feared, and bowel-looseningly successful assassins and bounty hunters in the known world.

“Yes, cousin,” Reginald said.

“You have a theory, don’t you?” Mort asked, his words coming out in an unusually fast, tumbled way. “I’m somewhat of an expert on picking up on minute facial expressions, and your face is painting me a picture of a thousand words at this very minute.”

I looked at Reginald Chaosbane’s face, but apart from being unusually stern, I couldn’t tell a damn thing about what might be passing through his mind.

When he spoke, it was loud enough so that everyone could hear him.

“Well… there it is,” he said. “We’ve all heard a lot of talk about the Universal Magic dying, haven’t we ladies and gentlemen? But we have just witnessed our very first example of it.”

A grim silence greeted these words. We didn’t have to understand the ins and outs and the reasons behind Universal Magic failing—it didn’t matter now. All that mattered was that it was happening, and that we had just seen it happen.

Cecilia grabbed hold of Janet’s hand. Alura moved in a little closer beside where I crouched next to Igor. Isobel Galeflint’s teeth ground with helpless anger. Enwyn glanced worriedly at Madame Xel. Felicity, the sabertooth tiger changeling whined low in her throat.

Reginald slapped his fist into his palm with a dull thwack of flesh-on-flesh. There was a look in his clever, dark eyes that told everyone nearby that the man was in no mood to be trifled with. That he was in no mood to be told what to do, or waste any more time skirting around the very real issue that was now at hand—the survival of Universal Magic.

“It looks like whoever—or whatever—is behind this has ramped things up,” the Headmaster growled, striding away from the group, snatching up his faded crimson coat and swinging it around his shoulders. “What happened to my poor scruffy, reprehensible—”

“Yes, yes, get on with it, Reggie,” Igor muttered, cutting in.

“Sorry, mate,” Reginald said, barely letting the interruption throw him from his stride. “As I was saying, what has happened to my dear, sweet cousin, Igor, with his spell failing, is just a taste of what’s to come. I fear that the dam has been breached, the first crack made.”

“We’re running out of time,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes, mates,” Reginald said. “Yes, we are.”

Enwyn stepped forward and laid a hand on the Headmaster’s arm.

“Reginald,” the sexy dark-haired woman said to the roguish man. “Reginald, we have to talk to the Arcane Council.”

Reginald Chaosbane started.

Then, like the sun cresting the eastern horizon and spilling its light over a brand-new day, one of—if not the—most dangerous and capable war mages in the known world smiled. I would not have liked to be the person he was thinking about when he smiled that particular smile.

“Talk!” he suddenly said, in a way that suggested he’d just come to the end of a lengthy internal debate with himself. “Talk! Pah! I don't have the time or the crayons to explain it to those bureaucratic ignoramuses. No, the time for talk is well past!”

The smile widened and took on just a scintilla of Jack Nicholson’s Joker.

“It is time,” Reginald Chaosbane, reaching down and hauling Igor to his feet, “for action!”

Chapter 2

Before I could ask what Reginald Chaosbane had in mind, a Gemstone Elemental walked over to us. Clearing his throat with a noise like someone dragging a church bell across the floor of a knave, he parted the curtain of spectators that had gathered around Igor.

He was over ten feet tall and carved from pure diamond, like a zirconia Hercules. He looked like he could easily have balanced the scales with a pickup truck sitting on the other side.

In short, he wasn’t the kind of dude that you were going to forget in a hurry.

And that was before you considered that he’d casually told me that me and his daughter were going to get hitched.

It was Alura’s father, The Prophet King of the Gemstone Elementals.

“Chaosbane,” he said, his voice ringing like silver gongs echoing out of a deep mine, “The two of us, along with Mr. Mauler, the Creation Mage here, have been summoned to a meeting, along with some of the other notable captains, leaders, and royals of the many worlds.”

“Meeting?” Reginald said, his sharp eyebrows contracted into a ‘V’ of confusion. “I don’t recall hearing about any meeting, and I wouldn’t forget a thing like that—’meeting’ rhymes with eating, treating, and beating, three of my favorite pastimes, so it would have stuck in my mind.”

The King of the Gemstone Elementals, whether because he was used to Reginald Chaosbane’s eccentricity or because he had no clue how to respond to him, simply went on as if the Headmaster had said nothing.

“Who is calling this meeting?” Reginald asked.

“I am,” the King replied.

Reginald nodded approvingly. “I was just thinking that such an assembly was just what the doctor ordered.” He winked at the giant diamond humanoid and patted him chummily on the chest. “Great minds, eh, my friend? Crystal clear thinking is the order of the day, am I right?”

“Idman Thunderstone is needed for this particular council too, Reginald,” the Gemstone King said, “but I can’t find the man anywhere.”

Reginald turned to me.

“I believe he’s still interrogating the Blade Sisters,” I said helpfully.

“Blade Sisters?” the Gemstone King asked, turning his curious white and gold eyes upon me.

“A couple of badass ladies who are as sharp and unforgiving as their name suggests,” I said. “They tried to kill me and some of my friends during a rigged War Mage Exhibition match. We captured them. Idman has been trying to pry the motive for their attempted assassination of me out of them.”

“He’s been prying extremely well,” Reginald said approvingly.

“Do you want me to go and get him, Headmaster?” I asked Reginald.

“That’d be corking, mate, simply corking,” he said to me. “When you’ve located him, bring the two of you along to the…?”

Reginald looked expectantly at the King of the Gemstone Elementals.

“To the Hall of the Fallen,” the giant crystalline figure said.

“The Hall of the Fallen, mate,” Reginald reiterated to me unnecessarily. “See the pair of you there in say, oh, ten minutes? You know the way, don’t you?”

“Yep,” I said. “Just follow the statues of all the dead guys, right?”

“Poetically put,” Reginald said as he and the Gemstone King began to walk off, “and do remind jolly old Idman to tuck his shirt in, mate.”

“Tuck his shirt in?” I muttered, wondering for the umpteenth time what the mad man was talking about.

Someone looped their arm through mine. Looking down, I found myself gazing into the big, brown, beautiful eyes of the sexy brunette, Janet Thunderstone.

“Come on, you,” she said to me. “I’ll come with you to get Dad. I wouldn’t mind seeing how he’s going. Feels like I haven’t seen him for more than a passing moment for ages.”

The two of us waved goodbye to the others and set off through the courtyard, heading for one of the many massive wooden doors that led into the heart of the incredible, shimmering keep of the Stronghold of the Twin Spirits.

The gigantic double doors, flanked with sculptures of dragons, creaked open automatically as we approached.

“Funny how quickly you get used to that sort of shit, isn’t it?” Janet said to me as we passed through the doors and into the cool shadows of the keep.

“Used to what?” I asked.

“You know, doors that open for you using magic and stuff like that?” Janet said. “I always found, after spending an extended period of time on Earth, that it was the more mundane magic that spooked me out the most when I returned here.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, we have automatic doors back on Earth, right?”

“Yeah, but they’re powered by electricity and sensors,” Janet observed.

“True, but I have about as much of an idea as to how that technology works as I do about how magic works. And I don’t give the automatic doors to my local mall half a thought when I’m walking through them.”

Janet nodded in understanding. “That’s very true. Human beings, huh? We’re pretty accepting at the end of the day. If it’s beyond our understanding, then fuck it, we just roll with it most of the time.”

“You’ve got such a way with words,” I said. “Just like Rick.”

Janet grinned and punched me on the arm.

Idman Thunderstone had been interrogating the Blade Sisters in one of the dungeons that led off the main hall of the keep. Our footsteps echoed loudly off the polished marble floors, bouncing off the obsidian ceilings above.

“Your parents had a real thing for monochrome decorating, huh?” Janet said as she pulled open the heavy door that led to the switchback staircase.

I thought of my father’s black staff and my mother’s white one, and how they had combined into the graceful, multi-hued staff I carried now.

“Yeah, I guess they did,” I said. “I’m not sure why. Yin and yang, light and dark, the color of chaos? There’s probably some meaning to it, some metaphor.”

We descended the stairs and entered a stone corridor lined with matching cell doors.

Unlike the prescribed law of dramatic convention would have led me to believe, there was no dank and gloomy quality to this dungeon. The air was fresh and smelled vaguely of lavender. The floor was clean and strewn with fresh rushes that rustled under foot. It was also well lit, illuminated by globes set into the ceiling, filled with the flickering light of fairies.

“Sounds like my dad has finally embraced the dark side and started to physically torture those tough bitches,” Janet said as we approached the end of the corridor where the Blade Sisters’ cell was located.

“What do you—” I started to say, then heard the soft scream. “Ah, I think you might be right there, detective.”

Janet looked a bit grim. “He hasn’t done this sort of work since, well, since you came into everyone’s life and mixed everything up.”

“You forgot to add ‘for the best’ at the end of your sentence, there,” I said.

“Oh yeah, right, since you came into everyone’s life and mixed everything up for the best.” Janet grinned.

I reached for the handle, paused, and then turned and gave Janet a deep kiss on the lips.

“Speaking of for the best,” I said. “It seems like ages since you and I… you know.”

Janet waggled her eyebrows. “Well shit, sailor, we’ve both been busy bees, haven’t we? But you know my bedroom door is always open to you, especially when you come bearing bottles of bourbon.”

I grinned back and kissed her again. “Saving the Universe,” I said softly into her mouth. “Who would have thought it could play such merry hell with a person’s sex life?”

I twisted the handle and pushed the door open.

To reveal Idman motherfucking Thunderstone and Pravum Blade engaging in some seriously frantic gland-to-gland combat. Janet’s dad had the younger woman bent over the wooden interrogation table, her muscular, caramel-colored legs spread and her bare tits squashed against the tabletop. Her burnished silver-colored hair was flopping over her face as she panted. Even as I gazed in disbelief, the prisoner—if the word could be applied to someone who was obviously having a great time—let out another little scream.

“Oh, fuck!” I said involuntarily, the word coming out of my mouth without conscious thought, even as my eyes sought vainly to tear themselves away from the sight of Idman Thunderstone’s bare ass thrusting backward and forward. “Fucking… fuck!”

“What?” Janet said, pushing forward to see what the hell I was looking at.

“Wait—” I tried to say, but Janet must have thought that there was a fight happening on the other side of the door or something, because she shoved past me, a scowl on her face and her hands bunched into fists.

“Oh, shit my ass, what the hell, Dad!” she said, falling back in the same way that she might have done had someone just tossed a beaker of fluoroantimonic acid directly into her eyeballs. “Why! Why did I have to… Oh, my… eurgh!”

Through a chink in the door, I saw Idman hurriedly pulling up his pants from where they were languishing around his ankles, while Pravum pulled her top up and her skirt down.

“Hells bells, Idman!” I called through the door, holding Janet by the arm in case she collapsed out of sheer mortification. “What kind of method of interrogation is this? Was this par for the course when you were the chief warden of the Eldritch Prison?”

Idman’s reply was somewhat breathless, but not lacking in his usual cold cutting tone, when he said, “She’s actually a rather intelligent young lady, I’ll have you know, Justin Mauler.”

“I don’t doubt that, pal,” I said easily. “She must be pretty smart. It’s not every captive prisoner that manages to talk her way into her should-be interrogators codpiece, is it?”

There was a jangling clink of a belt buckle being hastily fastened and, not without some little trepidation, I risked pushing the door back open.

Pravum Blade was sitting on the table she had oh so recently been being fucked over, with her legs crossed and her all-silver eyes shining with delight. For someone who had quite literally been caught with her pants down, she looked remarkably unabashed.

For his part, Idman was trying to maintain an air of severe dignity, but it was a hard look to pull off when the hem of his crisp white shirt was sticking out through the buttonholes of his fly like a floppy ghost weiner.

Janet, on stepping through the door behind me, wasted absolutely no time in pointing this out to her father.

“Bloody hell,” snapped Idman as he wrestled with his fly. “Bloody damn! Why couldn’t you two knock first, as anyone who wasn’t brought up in a cave should do before entering a room.”

“Well, Dad, the Eldritch Prison was pretty friggin’ cave-like,” Janet said scathingly, “so if there’s anyone to blame for my lack of decorum when it comes to opening doors, I think that it can be laid at your feet.”

The two Thunderstones glared at one another. I stood between them smiling embarrassingly and looking from one to another.

“This is awkward,” I said, in an attempt at getting the conversation moving again.

“Funny that, isn’t it, Dad? How could catching your own father boning one of the women who are supposed to be his prisoner be a little awkward, I wonder?” Janet said, her face flushing in a way that I recognized as heralding an impending hissy fit of the first order. She had a temper on her, did Janet, but I didn’t think now was the time for it to be unleashed.

I held up my hands.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said soothingly. “It’s definitely not ideal, although in Idman’s defense, Pravum is a hell of a piece of ass.”

Janet raised an eyebrow at me—an accomplishment in itself, seeing as the scowl she was directing at her father looked to be set in stone.

“Oh, just because she’s hot makes it acceptable for me to have to see—”

“No, I just meant that I can see it from Idman’s point of view as well,” I said.

“I was not waxing eloquent when I said that the young woman is intelligent, Janet,” Idman said, adopting what I thought was a suitable amount of sheepishness. “She has helped pry me from the clutches of the delicious—I mean illicit—substances that had me so firmly under their sway.”

Janet blinked and her scowl relaxed a fraction.

“Really?” she said. “You haven’t been spending days awake, off your ass on pixie powder with Igor?”

Idman shook his head.

“How did she manage to help you do that?” Janet asked.

“I—” Pravum began to say, but Janet stopped her with a look you could have bent an iron bar around.

“Pravum is an intelligent woman, skilled in the art of negotiation and psychology,” Idman said. “And, like her sister, is not quite as firm an adversary to our cause as she first appeared to be. She has given me much to think about and, in doing so, has helped me wean myself from the clutches of pixie powder, dame root drops, lich’s downfall, and glowing pistachios.”

I furrowed my brow at that last one.

“I thought glowing pistachios were just nuts?” I asked.

“They are,” Idman replied, “but they’re damned addictive, nonetheless. My cholesterol was rocketing.”

“So, you swapped one bad habit for another?” Janet snapped, but I could tell that a lot of the fire had gone out of her.

“Come on, I know you don’t believe that,” I said teasingly, putting an arm around her.

Janet gave me a small smile out of the side of her mouth.

“Right!” I said brightly, sensing the storm had passed and trusting that the image of Idman Thunderstone’s thrusting ass would fade from my memory with time. “Okay, let’s do what we came here to do. Idman, you and I have been called to some meeting of the bigwigs in the Hall of the Fallen.”

“Meeting?” Idman said, smoothing back his hair into its habitual neat widow’s peak.

“The Gemstone King has called it,” I said.

“Why, pray?” Idman asked.

“Oh right, yeah, you might not have felt the ripple, being busy and all,” I said. “There’s been a development. We’re meeting about the Universal Magic dying. Sounds like its rate of decline has been stepped up a notch by whoever or whatever is responsible.”

Idman’s face was dourer than usual as he swept up his coat from the back of a chair. He tossed the cell keys to Pravum and said, “Dear, if you’d be so kind as to return to your sister and lock yourself back in your cell? Just for appearances sake you understand?”

Pravum bowed her silver head and walked off toward the back of the room where another door stood ajar.

“Come, Mr. Mauler,” Idman said, sweeping past me. “Let’s go and attend this meeting of the bigwigs, as you so colorfully put it.”

I kissed Janet goodbye and hurried after the retreating figure of the former High Warden of the Eldritch Prison. As I followed in the tall man’s wake, I couldn’t help but laugh to myself.

“What’s tickling you so much back there?” Idman asked from over his shoulder.

“Just something that Reginald Chaosbane told me I should be sure of when I came to get you,” I said.

“And what was that?” Idman asked.

“To make sure that you had your shirt tucked in,” I replied innocently.

Even from ten paces behind the quickly striding figure, I could hear Idman grumbling to himself.

“Ruddy smartass,” he griped to himself as he ran his hands around his belt to make sure that he hadn’t missed anything.

Chapter 3

Idman and I were seated in the Hall of the Fallen five minutes later. It was a surprisingly plain room, filled with more statues of those that had given their lives for the cause of the Twin Spirits. Lamps bobbed and floated through the air, casting flickering shadows on the faces of the assorted big cheeses that had been assembled.

As always seemed to be the case in these sorts of gatherings, we didn’t get down to brass tacks straight away. Reginald Chaosbane took the floor first, despite the meeting being called by the Gemstone King.

The Headmaster gave everyone one of his usual stirring speeches, the kind that would have made him such a dangerous politician had been a resident of Earth.

After he had finished instilling in us just how important this mission of ours was likely to be—i.e., the fate of the entire Universe rested on our shoulders—the Gemstone King stood up and took the floor.

Alura was sitting just to my right at the awesome circular table around which all of us gathered. Every now and again, when she saw that my brain was in danger of liquifying into cream cheese, she would subtly kick me under the table and bring me back from the precipice of a catatonic state.

After what seemed like hours and hours of tedium, Alura’s dad once more took the floor and surveyed the captains and leaders of what was, essentially, our Resistance against the Arcane Council.

“Now that we have heard from the marshals and captains on the status of training and organizing our troops and raiding parties,” said the Prophet King of the Gemstone People, “it is time for me to tell you the chief reason why I have gathered you here at such short notice.”

The atmosphere around the table sharpened palpably.

“I, along with many of the royals and leaders among the realms and worlds,” Alura’s dad said, “have been summoned for a meeting with Queen Hagatha at the Castle of Ascendance.”

This was, of course, a perfect moment for the big cheeses to start grumbling and murmuring in dissent around the table. They muttered into their beards and shook their fists and did all the other things that powerful people do to show that someone has shat in their metaphorical cereal.

“The summons are fairly nondescript and cryptic,” the ruler of the Gemstone Elementals continued in his rumbling voice, “but it would appear that she is hoping to marshal forces to her cause. She is hoping to conscript, bribe, coerce, or flatter those who have been invited to fight for her cause.”

“And what is that cause?” a dark-elven woman said from across the room to me. She was dressed all in crimson leather and wrapped in a black cloak.

“Come come, Ossoni,” Reginald Chaosbane said. He had his feet up on the table, was puffing on a pipe shaped like a caterpillar and was blowing smoke rings at the ceiling. “Her cause is the same as ours in a way. Her cause is the impending war.”

The Prophet King nodded his huge shiny dome.

“We have our forces, and Queen Hagatha means to gather hers,” he said in his subterranean rumble.

“So, we’re openly calling it a war now, are we?” Ossoni asked.

“A conflict between two sides to decide an outcome. A conflict in which both of these sides are at risk of losing their combative war mages in open and guerrilla battle?” Reginald said. He blew a smoke arrow through one of his smoke rings, and it performed a loop-the-loop. “I don’t think we could call it anything but a war, could we?”

“Perhaps, it might be more of a mercy to let the Universe come to an end,” the dark elf woman said, sitting back in her chair and crossing her legs. “It seems that we are, all in all, sorry custodians of it, in the way we choose to live and fight amongst ourselves.”

Reginald swung his legs off the table and vanished his caterpillar pipe with a snap of his fingers. He leaned forward, and his clever eyes were very bright in his angular, handsome face.

“Ah, I see your point, my beautiful friend,” he said. “But don’t you see? That is precisely why we must save the Universe. The Universe embodies choice and chance. Just because some misguided fools wish to let it run its course and doom every single living and non-living thing in existence, doesn’t mean that we have to sit by and let it happen. That is our choice.”

There was some more muttering from around the table. If there was one thing that a room full of honchos was good at, it was muttering inaudibly.

“So,” said the Prophet King, raising his shovel-sized hands for quiet, “if fight we must, the question remains: how do we go about it?”

A silence fell, and I had an uncomfortable feeling about who was going to have to stand up and fill it.

I got to my feet in what would have been an unobtrusive manner had it not been for my chair screeching across the stone floor like a cat being dragged behind a motorbike on the motorway.

Every eye on the room turned to me.

“Ah,” said Ossoni, leaning forward and skewering me with her icepick gaze. “And here we have him; our resident Creation Mage.”

There was some more muttering, although this time it wasn’t tinged with disgruntlement, but with obvious interest.

“Now, don’t get me wrong,” I said, “I know that this is my parents’ old holiday home and everything, and that I’m the first Creation Mage to rear his head in quite some time, but if you’re looking for guidance, I might respectfully point you in the direction of the man with the immaculately trimmed beard over there.”

I pointed at Reginald, who made a show of looking around himself and then jabbing his thumb into his chest and mouthing, “Me?”

“He’s the brains of the operation,” I continued. “Not to mention a considerable portion of the balls.”

There was a smattering of appreciative laughter at this.

“All I know is what needs doing next,” I carried on, after the ripples of mirth had died away.

“And what’s that, Justin Mauler?” the Prophet King asked, standing with his arms folded across his barrel of a chest.

“I told you when we first arrived here, Your Highness,” I said respectfully, “but I’ll reiterate it and say it aloud for these others gathered here today, so that we all know what’s going on.”

I cleared my throat and tried to think how best to say what I needed to accomplish next.

“Apparently,” I said, “according to the wisdom and research of the Twin Spirits, the Universal magic can be jump-started and given a new lease of life, if a bunch of Creation Mages come together and create fresh magic.”

More muttering. I let it babble on for a little while, but not for too long. There was so much as a good thing, after all.

“What I mean, before someone asks me to clarify,” I said, “is that I need to get it on with four other Creation Mages and the magic that our… coupling will organically bring into being will help refill the mana reserves of the entire universe.”

This pronouncement was met with one hell of a silence. I mean, I’d experienced a few thoughtful silences in my time in the magical world, mostly after someone had offered some ludicrous piece of advice or proposed some suicidal scheme, but this was one for the books. The silence was of such undiluted disbelief that you could have heard a gnat fart.

“You’re telling us that—” said a female dwarf, with a Princess Laia haircut and enough jewelry to sink a pirate galleon.

“Yeah,” I said, not really being in the mood to have to spell it out in even more obvious terms. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying: I have to take the beef bus to tuna town with other Creation Mages.”

This got just the kind of reaction that I was after, but I didn’t care. I was past caring. I just wanted to get down to action, to save the freakin’ Universe with my friends so that we could put all this behind us.

“All right, so now that we’ve clarified what needs doing,” Reginald Chaosbane said amiably, “how about we figure out how to make it happen? The latest reliable intel suggests the Creation Mages are in the Castle of Ascendance.”

“What?” said the dark elf in disbelief. “How is that possible? There’s been no whispered words of such a thing reaching my ears.”

“It transpired that Queen Hagatha rounded them up and locked them away in her own little Creation Mage menagerie in the bowels of the Castle of Ascendance,” Reginald said, “though I’m more inclined to think that it’s the Arcane Council that are pulling the strings, mates.”

“Hold on, hold on, hold on,” I said, holding up my hands and striding out into the middle of the floor to join the Gemstone Elemental King. “I’ve just had a thought.”

“What is it?” the Prophet King asked.

My chin was sunk on my chest in thought as I ran over the logistics.

Admittedly, it was a simple plan. To my mind, though, that just meant that there was less to go wrong.

“I think I do, yeah,” I said slowly.

“Well, let’s hear it, dear boy, let’s hear it!” Reginald called jovially. “And if everyone else could kindly stop with the noise, we might not have to repeat it. Thank you.”

“It’s bold,” I admitted, “but it might be a case of hiding in plain sight, if you get my meaning?”

“Speak on,” said the Prophet King.

I turned on the spot and looked over at the Gemstone Princess, my friend, Alura.

“A bunch of you big fish VIPs have been invited to the Castle of Ascendance, right?” I asked. “Now, that would indicate to me that Queen Hagatha, or the Arcane Council, still don’t know which nobles and leaders have gone over to the side of the resistance here, is that right?”

“That’s about it, aye,” Isobel Galeflint said, who was picking her nails with a jewel-hilted dagger and looking sexy as hell while she did it. “Thanks to us completely wiping out that fuckin’ fleet they sent through the rift, they wouldn’t have any report whatsoever get back to ‘em.”

I nodded. It was just as I’d thought.

“Well, what better opportunity to get a whole bunch of our renegades into the castle?” I asked.

“You’re intending to gatecrash this little soiree?” the Gemstone King queried.

“That would be my intention, yes,” I replied. “And I’ve thought of a plausible cover for myself.”

“And that is?” Ossoni asked.

I pointed at Alura. “I go as the princess’ bodyguard and chaperone.”

Reginald Chaosbane’s eyes were positively swimming with delight as he considered my plan. He got slowly to his feet and daintily straightened his enormous lace cuffs.

“I think I speak for all those here,” he said, in a voice that brooked about as much invitation to be contradicted as Darth Vader’s, “when I say that I think it’s a wonderful and timely plan.”

I looked around the congregation. There was more than a little skepticism on their faces, but you were never going to please everyone—not even when the plan was as self-evidently practical as the one I had just laid out before them.

Ossoni cast her eyes in my direction. “This Creation Mage, this Mauler, he will need to be cloaked in a glamor, do you not think?”

“Of course he will,” Reginald said lightly. “He is probably the second most wanted man in all of Avalonia, running in the silver medal spot just behind yours truly.”

“A glamor?” I asked. “A magical disguise? I don’t really know much about that, but won’t there be some kind of sensing system to scan for clandestine magic when all the guests go in?”

Reginald nodded and looked impressed with my deduction.

“Indeed there will, mate,” he said. “Yes, indeedy, but I think we should be able to weave a rather powerful glamor. One subtle enough not to trigger any security djinn or security nexuses.”

“My daughter has not been formally invited, though,” the Gemstone King said.

Reginald waved an airy hand, and a metal hip flask appeared in it. The Chaos Mage looked at it in surprise, unscrewed the lid, and sniffed at it. Apparently satisfied that it was drinkable, he took a long swallow and smacked his lips and then said.

“I wouldn’t worry about that, your kingliness,” Reginald said. “The Arcane Council will be wanting to butter all of you up like a batch of fresh baked muffins. They’ll allow you to bring your royal daughter. This will be handy indeed, because it would be my recommendation that Alura accompanies Justin through the castle when he sneaks off on his mission.”

I looked over at Alura to see what she made of this. Unsurprisingly, she was smiling. I grinned back at her and winked. Man alive, but I just couldn’t get enough of the women in my life. It wasn’t just that they all happened to be as easy on the eye as a bikini-clad supermodel covered in chocolate sauce and sitting behind the wheel of a ‘63 Corvette Stingray, but they were always so eager for an adventure.

Reginald’s next words broke the sizzling eye contact between me and the Gemstone Princess.

“I will also be sending one other person along to help Mr. Mauler,” he said.

“Someone else?” I asked. “Who?”

“Odette Scaleblade,” Reginald said promptly.

“I thought you said that you’d only be able to make a glamor subtle enough for me?” I questioned.

“Yes, that’s right. Just for you, Justin, old top.” Reginald Chaosbane wagged his head sagely and took another drink from his flask.

“So then how…?” I asked.

“Although you and your friends know Odette Scaleblade only as a teacher, she is, in fact, a royal for the dragonkin, Justin,” Reginald said. “As such, she’s also received a summons.”

That was news to me, but now wasn’t the time to marvel that I’d had sex with not one royal personage, but two.

“Won’t the Arcane Council know that she’s been working for you, though?” I asked.

“Yes, the crusty, stubborn bastards—I apologize, I mean, the Arcane Council—know that Odette worked at the Mazirian Academy, but I think it would be rather fun for her to play the role of a turncoat, don’t you? Just to add a touch of cyanide to the mixture.”

There was a crisp clearing of a throat from off to my left, a sound like a couple of carrot sticks being snapped in half, and Idman Thunderstone got to his feet.

“Chaosbane,” he said curtly, “if I might be so bold?”

“Of course, Idman, of course,” Reginald said. In quite an audible aside, he said to me, “Good job on making sure he was presentable, Mauler,” and gave me a thumbs-up.

Idman colored a little around the neck but carried on as if he had no idea what the headmaster of the Mazirian Academy was talking about.

“In my time interrogating our two prisoners downstairs, Reginald,” he said, “it has come to be known to me that Acer, of the Blade Sisters, is of royal stock too. This would mean that she could go along on this mission too.”

“Did you use your super-secret and ultra-effective methods of interrogation on her, too?” I whispered loudly.

A few people looked, intrigued, from me to Idman and back again.

“No, of course not. I do not share the bond with Acer that I share with Pravum,” Idman snapped.

A couple of the council members nearest me rolled their eyes and let out little knowing groans of comprehension.

“Sounds like old Thunderstone porked his interrogation subject,” said an ancient-looking faun, whose hair floated from the sides of his wrinkled head like wisps of white cloud.

“I assure you all that Acer Blade is of the same mind as us,” Idman said, his words coming out through tightly gritted teeth. “In the course of our interviews, she has admitted to me that she wishes to save the Universal Magic.”

Reginald exchanged looks with the King of the Gemstone Elementals.

“We have your assurance that the woman known as Acer will not cause trouble or seek to derail the mission?” the Prophet King asked.

“I guarantee that Acer will help,” Idman said somberly.

“Tell me, Idman,” Reginald said, “has the young lady in question divulged her age under your questioning?”

Idman considered this.

“No,” he said. “No, she has not. And we started with the basic information when I first sat her down.”

“Fine, that’s good enough for me,” Reginald said happily, sitting casually on the edge of the table and sucking the last drops from his flask. “A chap should never trust a wench who tells him her real age—even under torture or interrogation. A lass who would tell a fellow that would tell a fellow anything.”

Idman sat down and the talk turned to how we planned on getting through the various levels, doors, and passwords, as well as the myriad collection of suspicious guards inside the Castle of Ascension.

“Not to mention actually finding the Creation Mages’ exact location,” Ossoni said. “All of us have been inside the Castle of Ascendance at one point or another. We know what a maze that place is. How many secret passages and concealed corridors burrow their way through it. It’s said that you can make your way from the bottom of the lowest dungeon to the pinnacle of the highest tower without setting foot on a single stair, if you know the way.”

“Man, that’s a great bit of advertising,” I murmured to myself.

“As for that, do not trouble yourself, my pointy-eared, midnight-eyed delight,” Reginald said graciously.

“Don’t trouble myself?” Ossoni said with a slight snort of amusement. “Why?”

“Because I have an inside man.” Reginald tapped his nose, only missing it on the first two attempts. “And when I say a man, I mean a woman. And when I say on the inside, I mean on the inside.”

He went to suck a few more drops out of his hip flask, forgetting that he’d just emptied it a moment ago. With a theatrical sigh, he slipped it sadly up one voluminous sleeve.

“An old enchantress, Gertrude, whom I believe Mr. Mauler made the acquaintance of not too long ago, is going to go along with our clandestine delegation and help them through the various passageways and bits and bobs in the castle,” Reginald continued with his characteristic blitheness that he often employed when glossing over a plan that could go to hell in an exceptional way.

I remembered the wizened old dear who had helped Mallory and Leah and me break into the Castle of Ascendance during our stay at Chaosbane Ranch, during the Yuletide celebrations. It had been largely thanks to her that I had opened up the additional spell slots in my grimoire, one of which had been recently filled with the healing spell, Blessed Zephyr.

“What’s in it for her?” Ossoni asked.

“Pardon me?” Reginald cupped a hand to his hear.

“What’s in it for the old crone?” Ossoni repeated.

“Well, firstly, I think I can speak for Gertrude when I say that she would take umbrage at being called a crone,” Reginald said. “Secondly, it’s a little cynical of you to think that dear Gertrude wouldn’t just do it out of the kindness of her heart.”

“There’s always something in it for everyone, Chaosbane, you know that,” the dark elf replied with a seductive smile.

Reginald ran a finger around his collar.

“I’d rather not speak of her motives. It’s personal, you see. I don’t imagine I need to say any more on the matter,” he said in a slightly strangled voice, his eyes running over the sultry dark elf. “I’ve also managed to convince her into seeing if she can’t wrangle some of her peers into joining the good guys.”

“Good guys?” Ossoni asked.

“That’d be us I’m alluding to, you cruel and beautiful example of female delight,” Reginald replied.

“Ah,” Ossoni said.

“Alright,” I said, “when can I get this glamor? Will there be a time limit as to how long it will last?”

Despite myself, I couldn’t help but think of the Polyjuice Potion in a certain famous book that I had read in the back of my uncle’s shop when I was a kid.

“A time limit?” Reginald’s head snapped around so that he faced me. “What good would a time limit be?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know, but in these disguise situations, I thought having a ticking time bomb added to the suspense of the whole thing. Only lasting for an X amount of time, you know?”

There was another one of those long pauses.

“What world did you say you came from again, boy?” the ancient faun asked in his cracked little voice.

“I didn’t,” I said. “But I’m from Earth.”

“Sounds like a fucking nonsensical place to me,” the old faun said casually.

I couldn’t really argue with the old fellow there.

Reginald stood up and clapped his hands for attention.

“If I could borrow the mana from you and you and you and—no not you—and you,” he said, pointing at a few of the assembly, “we can get this glamor sorted so that when it’s time to leave, there will be one less thing to worry about.”

Reginald jumped clean over the table and approached me where I stood in the middle of the floor. In a thoroughly disconcerting manner, he pressed the tip of one index finger to the side of my head, making a crude gun shape with his hand.

“Now, this might tickle just a bit,” he said, looking me up and down and sticking his tongue between his teeth.

He cocked his thumb.

It was like someone was running one of those wire head massagers all over my body. I shivered and let out a long, slow sigh.

And then it was done, apparently.

“Now, to us and anyone that knows you,” Reginald explained, “you will look like yourself, but to anyone else, you will appear like this.”

He conjured a mirror from the ether and had it float in front of me.

A fat old man blinked owlishly out of me. The reflection looked like something you might get if you stuffed an obese turkey into a suit and then melted its face with an overpowered hairdryer.

“Guess I’m not going to have to worry about being cornered by any stunning ladies at the castle,” I said.

“No, I shouldn’t think so,” Reginald said. “Now, you can turn the glamor on and off at will, should you need to, but once you are inside the Castle of Ascendance, I cannot think of a reason why you’d need to take that risk. You can also turn it up a notch so that even those who know you will see this apparition I have constructed. You are in that state now.”

“Is this vile old chode based on anyone in particular?” I asked.

“He is, or was, one of the queen’s lesser attaches from quite some time ago, a man who I had a few dealings with sometimes,” Reginald said. “He was a bigoted old halfwit, who once escorted me around the Castle of Ascendance. Smelled quite strongly of brussels sprouts if my memory serves—or some kind of brassica. He recently died from an accident while in retirement, but no one knows of this. His death was rather unfortunate but totally secret.”

“And you think that posing as this guy is a smart move?” I asked. “Pretending to be a bodyguard in the body of an old guy who used to work at the castle?”

“Trust me,” Reginald said, “men like him are barely tolerated and quickly and efficiently forgotten when they leave. He’s the ideal choice. He’s got that perfect look of self-importance and irritable senility that makes guards think he’s probably got the authority to be where he is, and the temper to make their lives a living hell if they question him about it. You can just say that you’ve been brought back from retirement to help with the influx of visitors.”

I nodded and poked at the succulent gut that hung over the wristband of my glamor suit.

“And with a physique like this, no guard is going to seriously think he could be much trouble outside of a toilet cubicle,” I said.

“A disgusting thought, but well merited.” Reginald grinned and put an arm around my shoulder. “You can thank me later.”

Chapter 4

So, with an agreeable matter-of-factness, the council was concluded, and our plan was set in stone.

Posing as Alura’s ancient and crusty chaperone, I would accompany Odette Scaleblade, Acer Blade, and the rest of the contingent of rebels that had been unwittingly invited to Queen Hagatha’s pad. There, using my disguise and the local know-how of the old dear, Gertrude, we would slip insidiously under the noses of the Arcane Council like a fart in a crowded room. I would find the Creation Mages that the Queen and the Arcane Council had held captive, and I would do a bit of a Shawshank Redemption on them.

Bob’s your uncle, Fanny’s your aunt, everyone would be home in time for some of Bradley Flamewalker’s hot cadejo cobbler and mugs of stingo.

I almost chuckled to myself at the absurdity of that level of optimism. The idea of a scheme, devised by any of us in this world, going to plan with the smooth slickness of a boiled onion was pretty farfetched. I mean, when had that ever happened before? It was a solid ten out of ten for forethought and hopefulness, but a fair man would have to knock off about five-thousand points for lack of realism.

Not that that was a bad thing in my book. I loved a challenge, and I had enjoyed every thrilling adventure that had been thrown into my path since the very first day that Enwyn Emberskull had popped my portal cherry and dragged my disbelieving ass into Avalonia.

In the meantime, while we waited for the details to be ironed out, I thought it was worth expanding my skill set even further. You could never have enough spells at your disposal in my experience.

Recently though, with the limited spots that I had available, I’d been given more thought to which of my lovely ladies I’d spend a night with.

Now, obviously, this was a problem akin to not being able to decide what supercar you want to drive to the Superbowl in, but it was still something that required a modicum of forward planning.

Also, fairly recently, in a conversation about the birds and the bees that was probably up there with the weirdest parent-child sex talks in the history of the universe, my dad had told me that I could also influence the kinds of spells that I created during sex. How? Simply by choosing the tempo or position or intensity that me and my companion—or companions—fucked in.

Yeah, it wasn’t really Biology 101, that was for sure. Things had really stepped up a notch from the carefree days when all I had to think about was whether I had a rubber in my wallet, and to make sure that I put the damned thing on.

Gertrude had helped me find three relics within the Castle of Ascendance, last time that I had seen her, and these had opened up new slots in my spell book. After acquiring these relics, a test to see whether the things actually worked had, of course, been in order. Mallory Entwistle, Isobel Galeflint, and I had done the business and I had been rewarded with the very helpful Blessed Zephyr spell, which meant that my available slots were now down to three.

I spent the rest of the morning wandering alone through the Stronghold, watching the myriad of different races of war mages training and drilling and organizing. Like a kid in a candy shop, I was tempted to just grab a little bit of everything, stuff it into my mouth, and see what flavor I ended up with. By that, I meant a not insignificant part of me wanted to organize a sex party with all my women and see what happened.

“No, Justin, no,” I said to myself as I walked across the top of one of the battlements and watched a company of dark-elven war mages drilling with the fluidity of samurai in a courtyard below. “No, it’s better to be clever about this. You’ve got limited spell slots and a stealth mission at hand. It’s smarter to think with your head instead of your… other head.”

I strolled thoughtfully along the top of the wall, enjoying the balmy breeze that wafted up the river from the spectral sea. I watched the leader of the dark elves as she put her cohorts through their paces. It only took me a few seconds of admiring the flowing grace with which she moved, and the decisive way in which she lunged forward with the spear, to recognize her as being Ossoni.

“Undoubtedly hot,” I muttered to myself as the female elf flipped sideways, using magic to make her spear dart out of her hand like the tongue of a snake before retracting it back into her palm. “Undoubtedly fucking dangerous too.”

Even as I said the words, the dark elf looked up at me, her eyes piercing in their intensity. She smiled and gave me the smallest of nods.

When I descended from the wall and returned to the main keep, I still hadn’t decided on what kind of spell I wanted. But my stomach was growling, so I figured a bite to eat wouldn’t hurt.

I made my way through the grand, twisting, black and white corridors of my parents’ home away from home until I was at the doors of the feasting hall.

“Alura!” I said, when the doors had swung silently open to admit me, catching sight of the Gemstone Elemental Princess sitting alone at a table in one corner. “How’re you feeling after that meeting? Are you happy with the plan?”

Alura flashed me a bright smile. There were few sentient creatures in the known universe that had a smile as bright as a Gemstone Elemental.

“It’s as solid a plan as we can devise in the time that is allowed us,” she said. “Like you said, there’s no way that we would get a better chance at slipping into the castle undetected than when we are actually invited inside.”

“Do you know when we’re leaving?” I asked, taking a seat next to Alura. “Reginald Chaosbane made it sound like it could be tomorrow.”

The Gemstone Princess shrugged. “I doubt it will be that soon, but it won’t be long. There’s an etiquette to these things. As Queen Hagatha is such a lofty personage, and therefore a prime security risk, the dates of her invitations are usually kept secret until the last minute. It provides potential assassins less time to formulate their plans. Guests are given a date range of about a week, but not an exact date until the day before.”

“But what if you had something else planned for that day? A dentist’s appointment or a meeting with your accountant or something? It’s a bit rough for a royal or VIP having to block out an entire week of their schedule, isn’t it? Annoying for them too, I imagine.”

Alura gave me a look that said, “Such is the way of things though, eh?”

“No one is ever too busy for an invitation with the Queen of Avalonia, Justin,” she said to me gently. “Dentists and accountants understand such things.”

“Not an accountant that I ever met,” I muttered, thinking of the soulless men and women who had periodically dropped by my uncle’s occult bookstore to tell him how much rent, tax, or accountancy fees he owed.

“Anyway,” Alura said, “I think we should have at least two days before the summons come.”

I nodded. “Have you eaten yet?”

Alura shook her head. “No, I meant to, of course, but I was a little preoccupied with thoughts of this mission and just sat myself down here and got lost in my ruminations.”

“I know that feeling,” I said.

“It’s strange,” Alura said thoughtfully, “there’s really nothing that I have to do except act in the manner that I always previously acted—before I started at the Mazirian Academy and met you and all the others. Being a Princess again, and not just another adventurer, feels very strange. Much more of an act than I had previously perceived it to be.”

“An act?” I asked. “But haven’t you always been a princess?”

“Yes,” Alura said, “but it’s not as if you’re born a princess. As soon as you’re old enough, you’re trained and you’re guided and you’re fettled carefully into becoming this figurehead, you know? It’s very odd, in a way, and no one bats an eye. When I arrived at the Mazirian Academy, it was the first time in my life when I was actually given the freedom to decide not just who I wanted to be, but who I was.”

I reached out and squeezed her hand. “I know the exact feeling. Well, maybe not the exact feeling. The closest I ever got to meeting a royal was visiting Burger King.”

Alura tilted her shimmering crystal head to one side, her brow slightly furrowed.

“Your world had a king of burgers?” she asked.

“No, no, I—” I began.

“Oh, you mean that this king was made of burgers?” Alura said promptly.

“In a way…” I started to say, then shook my head.

“He ruled a kingdom of burgers?”

“In marketing terms—”

“His crown was a burger?”

“His crown was a burger? No. Look, the point is that I was not in a similar position to you within my society, not even close. I can appreciate the feeling of freedom and internal awakening that you experienced on arriving at the Mazirian Academy, though.”

“Oh,” Alura said, “I see.”

I snorted and gave her hand another squeeze. It was always such an interesting experience just touching Alura. All of my senses, even now, expected the girl to be hard and unyielding and freezing to the touch, due to her looking like a walking talking ice sculpture. However, when our skin met, she was just as soft as any other woman.

“I’ll get us some food,” I said. “I’ve got something I want to talk to you about.”

I excused myself and grabbed a plate of food from the canteen that had been set-up to service the war mages in the Stronghold of the Twin Spirits.

The spectral chefs who’d been awoken had, quite literally, centuries of experience. They had catered for the war mages who had used to call the Stronghold a base of operation but, before that, the ghostly cooks had reportedly worked for some fabulously rich sultan mages on some distant moon world.

I returned to the table, my plate piled high with roc pie, salt and sour beavertail, a delicate chimera souffle, and a mixed walnut and storm-dust salad. Alura was waiting for me with a slightly knowing smile on her face.

“So,” she said, “what did you want to talk with me about, Justin?”

I stabbed a forkful of the walnut and storm-dust salad and watched as tiny strands of lightning danced briefly along the metal tines of the fork.

“I’ve been thinking how best I can prepare for our foray into enemy territory,” I replied.

Alura made a noise in her throat that told me to go on while she sliced off a portion of the salt and sour beavertail and popping it into her mouth.

“My initial thoughts were moving more toward a group study session, if you get my drift,” I said. “But then I figured that I should try something a little different, or not so much different, but more focused.”

Alura chewed in the dainty manner that only the very rich have managed to perfect. Without haste, she swallowed, broke off a little segment of the roc pie, and said, “More focused? You mean, you should direct your talents as a Creation Mage in a more specific direction?”

“That’s it,” I agreed. “That’s exactly it. The more mature and tactical approach.”

“And this tactical and more mature approach to making love to make magic is…?” Alura dabbed at the corner of her mouth with a napkin, her white and gold eyes fixed on mine.

“Well, rather than just throwing us all in the mixer and seeing what cocktail comes out,” I said. “I thought that sleeping with one particular woman might create a more powerful, potent, specific spell. One that might benefit our clandestine mission.”

Alura’s eyes were shining in her face and a mischievous grin was playing across her face, coming and going like wind through a meadow.

“Are you sure you’re not just saying this because all the other women are tied up with their preparations for the looming battle, Justin Mauler? All the women except for Princess Alura?”

I held the eye of the royal personage and gave her a smile that I hoped conveyed all the naughty thoughts that filled my imagination.

“You and I both know that, when it comes to jumping on the good foot to do the bad thing, it is never a matter of convenience with you, Alura,” I said.

A slight opaqueness crept over the cheeks of the Gemstone Elemental—her equivalent of a blush. Alura smiled and picked at her food.

We ate in silence for a little while, that nice companionable silence two people can share when they don’t feel compelled to chat. The walnut and storm-dust salad sent delicious thrills of electricity rippling through my mouth and stomach, and the roc pie was absolutely excellent.

“Can I ask you something?” I said, spearing a morsel of the chimera souffle and watching it change from a bright blue to a dusky purple as my forkful was detached from the main pudding.

“Of course,” Alura answered graciously.

“When all this is done… When we’ve hopefully saved the Universal Magic, kicked the Arcane Council in the proverbial nut-satchel, and set the world back onto a more stable course, what do you want to do next?”

Alura chewed thoughtfully on another mouthful of the beavertail. Unlike the Canadian delicacy, which was a pancake made in the shape of a beavertail, Avalonian beavertail came right off the ass end of a beaver.

Might have sounded a bit gross to me when I first arrived in the world, but it hadn’t been long before Bradley Flamewalker had pointed out to me that rump steak and oxtail were all perfectly delicious. Since then, I had left my preconceived gastronomic prejudices at the door.

“What would I do next?” the Gemstone Princess mused. “What would I do next? I suppose, realistically and if at all possible, I would go back to the Mazirian Academy, no? Finish off our studies and become a fully-fledged war mage.”

“You want to become a professional war mage? Fight for sport and money and glory in front of millions of people around the world?” I asked.

“All our adventures have made for some rather in-depth training, no?” Alura replied. “Perhaps, if we come out of this situation alive and completely intact, we’d be some of the best war mages to have ever existed?”

She laughed as she saw the expression of dawning comprehension on my face.

“I see from your look that you haven’t considered that before,” Alura said.

“Nope,” I said. “But that’s a fucking excellent point, Your Majesty.”

Alura pretended to stab me in the hand with her fork when I called her by her title. I laughed and put my hands up in surrender.

“I’m sorry, please, don’t send me to hang, I beg you!” I mocked her.

Alura laughed and slapped me on the shoulder with the back of her hand.

“Shut up,” she said, endeavoring not to spray crumbs of roc pie over the table.

“Not very ladylike behavior,” I observed, smiling.

“Oh, Justin Mauler.” The Gemstone Princess shook her pretty head and fluttered eyelashes that looked like the tiniest and most exquisite icicles ever formed. “Just because I’m noble, does not mean that I am necessarily a lady. You should know that by now.”

I licked my lips and nodded. “I have seen glimpses that have made me question whether there’s not a sex-crazed minx under that first-class exterior.”

Alura hit me with the back of her hand again and blushed once more.

“Also,” I said, “I was meaning what you would like to do after our studies have been completed, you know—assuming that you don’t turn into the most badass and famous war mage there’s ever been, of course. I was thrown into the deep of this world. I never really got to know anyone who came from a ‘normal’ background. I was wondering what you might see as being a ‘normal’ future.”

Alura studied me carefully for a while. Then, as if she had weighed up whether she could trust me with this information she was about to spill, and decided that she could, she leaned forward.

“I suppose, in the long term, I yearn to be a mother,” she said, determinedly meeting my eye.

I raised my eyebrows.

Somehow, I hadn’t been expecting that, even though it was one of the most normal and understandable replies I could have been given by a young woman.

“You look a little taken aback, Creation Mage,” Alura said to me.

“What makes you say that?” I asked.

“The fork full of salad that is motionless in front of your mouth and that you seem to have forgotten about,” Alura replied, smiling.

I looked down. “Oh. Yeah.”

“That stunned you a little?” Alura pressed.

I considered this. “Not really. At least, not the actual thought of you wanting children. I mean, that’s fairly standard, isn’t it? If no one thought about having kids, then the universe would be a much quieter place, I guess.”

“Then why do you look like you’ve just been on the receiving end of one of Igor’s special cigarettes?” the Gemstone Princess teased me.

I snorted at the description. I must have looked dazed and confused. Igor’s special cigarettes had left many of the war mages around the Stronghold stoned to the marrow, dribbling and thinking that they were characters from Sesame Street—not bad for a world in which television didn’t even exist.

“I guess I’m surprised because all the crazy shit that we’ve done has made me expect the outrageous constantly. Wanting to have kids though… I actually understand that.”

Alura beamed at me, leaned across, and spoke in a low and enthusiastic voice. “Yes, parenthood is something that I think would interest me and reward me greatly. I’m in a unique position to be able to raise a child in an environment of overlapping societal experiences, you see.”

“I get what you’re saying. You were raised in a palace, as a royal, and yet you’ve also lived life outside those walls and experienced a lot of good, solid, everyday things.”

“Like fighting for my life in naval battles, unexpected encounters with a variety of lethal magical creatures, meeting people from all walks of life and the afterlife, and group sex,” Alura said primly, nodding her head.

“Uh, right,” I said, “although I’m not sure whether the group sex thing is something you want to push on your kid, you know? Until they’re eighteen at least. That’s the sort of thing that gets you banned from those awful-looking student-parent mingling parties that some parents like to hold at their houses.”

“Interesting…” said Alura, and I could tell that the pragmatic woman was making a mental note.

“I think, so long as you could keep the anecdotes of your promiscuous doings with yours truly to a bare minimum, that you’d make a damn good mother, Alura.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely. You’ve got some serious snap in your garters, as far as brain power goes, you’re kind, thoughtful, and considerate. You also don't take any shit and know how to put your foot down, which I think is key when it comes to raising ankle-biters. Or, at least, that’s what I’ve gathered from numerous films and books.”

Alura smiled and laid a hand on my arm.

“That’s really sweet of you to say, Justin,” she said.

Not knowing what to say to that, I ate the last mouthful of roc pie and twiddled my fork around a bit.

“Have you ever thought about it?” Alura asked me softly.

“Thought about what?” I asked.

“About, you know, reproducing?”

“You make it sound so sexy,” I quipped, while I chewed the last of the pie into pulp and considered the question with an alarming amount of intensity.

Alura nudged me with her elbow. “Come on, Justin Mauler. You can tell me.”

“It’s something that I haven't given a lot of thought to, really, being a parent. When I consider it now, I guess it’s because we’ve been so busy, haven’t we?”

Alura laughed lightly and nodded. “You could say that.”

“In all honesty, I’ve been surprised that we manage to survive each new scrape that we get into,” I admitted. “I wouldn’t want to jinx us by planning that far ahead.”

“You’re not a superstitious man, surely?”

“Nah, I’m not. Especially when I think about the skill and determination and bravery of all the mages that we have on our side. Luck plays only the smallest hand in our dealings. But I suppose that now, on the cusp of a great battle, it’s not a great time to start thinking about this sort of thing.”

“You don’t think so?” Alura asked me.

“Might be a distraction,” I said. “Might be something in the back of your mind that results in the front of your head getting blown off by a curse.”

Alura looked unconvinced. I stared at her, trying to decipher the thoughts and emotions that were scudding over her crystalline face like the reflections of clouds on the surface of a still pond.

“Although…” I said, turning my eyes pensively to the tabletop. “It could be the best time to think about it—seeing as death, serious brain injury, magical memory-wiping, not to mention a host of other fates, could be looming on the horizon. After all, death means leaving life with things left undone, doesn’t it…?”

To my astonishment, as I looked up, the Gemstone Princess was leaning as close to me as she could, eyeing me with naked desire all over her gorgeous face.

“Are you… okay?” I asked her.

Alura smiled widely, her teeth shimmering as she licked her lips and gazed at me with adoring eyes. “That’s what makes you such a unique man, Justin Mauler.”

“It is?” I asked. “What is?”

“The fact that you say these profound things, seeming to read my mind, and say them without any sort of ulterior motive. You say them because you mean them.”

Then I clicked.

Alura had been turned on by my roundabout admission that parenthood was something that I’d be interested in.

With all the fighting, exploring, adventuring, fucking, partying, and meeting new people, it had been a hell of a while since I’d had time to draw a mental breath and think of something like having kids.

It was true, though. There was no knowing whether any of us would survive our next adventure, or the one after. In a way, children were the one thing, if we had them, that we could be sure of leaving behind.

There was that old saying about how a person dies twice. Once when they actually kick the bucket, and again when their name is forgotten. With a kid, there was some chance that your name would live on just a little longer, and that people would remember what you fought and stood for.

I came to a decision with an alacrity that might have shocked me a little, had I not known and been as comfortable with myself as I was.

“Alura,” I said, “if we get through all this, if we survive all the insane shit that is no doubt coming down the roads of our futures right now like a bunch of runway oxcarts, and it’s something that you want, then…” I reached out and took the Gemstone Princesses hand. “Then, maybe, you and I could make ourselves a baby.”

I waited with bated breath after I spoke the words. It would be just my luck to have totally misread the situation and made an ass of myself. If there was one thing that I could usually count on, back on Earth, it was that I wouldn’t so much as put my foot in something, as stamp my entire leg and most of my lower torso right through it.

To my relief, Alura’s face broke out into a smile that was to smiles what Sean Connery was to men with chest hair—a champion.

“Justin,” she breathed, her hand dropping from my arm to below the table so that she could squeeze my thigh, “that would be incredible. I didn’t want to be presumptuous, but there was no other man that I could even consider being the father of my children.”

“I’m sure you’d retract that statement after the first nappy change,” I joked.

Alura’s gold and white eyes burned like a couple of flares into my own. Below the edge of the table, her hand edged its way up my thigh, squeezing and tickling through the fabric of my pants.

“Hell, maybe we can even get married,” I said. “I’m not sure what the rules are about polygamous relationships in this world, but maybe you, me, and all the other ladies could get hitched.”

Alura’s hand made the final dash northward and kneaded urgently at the front of my pants. She squeezed my package a couple of times, her eyes never leaving my face, and then said, “We need to go somewhere. Now.”

“Somewhere?” I asked.

“Anywhere.”

“I’m guessing the only requirement of this somewhere is that it needs to be private?” I said, giving the Gemstone Elemental a sly smile.

“I don’t care where it is,” Alura said, her voice husky with desire. “So long as it is close, and so long as it has enough room for you to make use of every single part of my body.”

These dirty words, coming from such a clean cut and aristocratic young woman, were enough to give me a semi there and then.

“I haven’t figured out all the passages and hidden nooks of this place yet, but I’m sure we can find somewhere that suits our rather compelling needs.”

Alura bit her bottom lip. She wore her usual shimmering robe of clinging silver mist, which wrapped her body and swayed as she walked like it was made of real cloth. It was a remarkable bit of magic, which all the Gemstone Elementals could make use of. As I ran my eyes over Alura’s body, she must have quickly dissipated an area of the misty, ethereal fabric from around her chest because, just for the space of a single heartbeat, I caught sight of her naked breast.

“Alura!” I hissed with delight, looking around the room to see if anyone had caught sight of the Gemstone Princess’ public display of nudity.

Alura grinned wickedly and took me by the hand, her hazy dress already concealing her once more.

“Come on,” she said.

“On what part of you?” I whispered into her ear as I followed her out of the feasting hall.

The two of us may have sated our appetites for food, but we were both ravenous for a special kind of dessert.

Chapter 5

I had not been lying to Alura—I really didn’t know my way around the yet. I mean, that was hardly surprising, seeing as the place was as easy to navigate as the Vatican and as massive as Michigan Stadium.

As soon as we left the feasting hall, we stumbled and hurried off down the nearest corridor to our left. This turned out to be a bad idea because this particular corridor was one of the chief routes to the armory, and that was a pretty popular destination these days.

“Come on,” Alura said, practically panting with desire as she towed me around a corner and wrenched open a door.

We found ourselves in another corridor, crafted and shaped from the same flawless black and white marble that the rest of the castle was made from. That was one thing that I’d say about the monochromatic interior design scheme that my mom and dad had opted for—it sure made it easy to get lost.

We stumbled down a few more corridors, kissing and pawing at one another like a couple of simple primates trying their best to pickpocket one another. The Gemstone Princess’ breath was hot and incessant against my face, as my tongue probed at hers and her tongue probed at mine, like a couple of miniature wrestlers involved in a battle for territory.

Every now and again, we were obliged, out of the sake of common decency, to halt fondling one another as footsteps approached. We would nod as whatever person or group of mages walked quickly passed, and then we would get back to our urgent groping the moment their footsteps had faded away. It reminded me of being at high school again and thinking that any of the tired, underpaid teachers really gave a shit that a couple of horny teens were trying to fellate each other over their clothing.

“Do you think it’s important that we get out of the corridors?” I asked. “Only, I’m very fast approaching the point where I’ll cheerfully fuck you right here and now, and screw anyone who comes along.”

Alura pulled back from my ear, where she had been busying herself with chewing and sucking on my earlobe, and gave me a funny look.

“Oh, I meant to hell with anyone that comes along and sees us, not that I would then fuck anyone else that came along and saw us,” I said. “No, I’m feeling way too selfish to let anyone else get involved here.”

“As to us being caught,” Alura said. “If you think that there is anything roaming around that is more important than my sexual gratification, then I want it found and put to death.” She growled lustfully into my ear and sucked hard on the side of my neck.

“Once again,” I said, my breath coming tight through the rapturous smile that was tugging at my lips, “not very ladylike. Not very ladylike at all.”

“It’s my royal prerogative, Justin,” Alura said, reaching down to squeeze roughly at my growing hard-on. “You don’t have to like it—you just have to do it.”

“I’d love to say that I knew where we were and that there was going to be a convenient bedroom somewhere up ahead,” I said, “but I have no idea.”

We fumbled our way up the corridor. My boots squeaked on the shiny floor as I rattled vainly at locked door handles.

“Gods-damn it there must be somewhere that has an open—ah!” I said as finally one of the many closed doors yielded to my insistent jiggling.

My back was to the heavy wooden door at that point. Alura had just dug down and pushed her hand into my pants, managing to unbutton them and work them down to mid-thigh. My half-erect cock sprang cheerfully out, like an eager puppy invited for a stroll.

All in all, the timing at finding an open door could not have been better.

I booted the door open with my heel, and we half fell, half stumbled inside. Alura kicked the door closed behind us.

It made sense that the room that we found was a washroom. What other room would usually be left open, even in the most secret area of the most secret magical facility? Not even the most security conscious, high strung, paranoid war mage wants to be fumbling for a key if they find themselves needing to relieve themselves.

As soon as she had locked the door behind her, Alura’s misty outfit blew apart like fog under a summer sun. Thick candles sprang into life around the room like arcane sensor lights as she shot the bolt across the heavy door and turned to face me in all her naked glory.

“I want you, Justin,” she said.

“I was getting that impression,” I replied.

The naked Gemstone Elemental stalked toward me, with all the predatory single-mindedness of a diamond leopard. She pressed her naked body up against me and kissed me hard, her groin rubbing up against my cock that hung out of the front of my pants.

So quick and horny had Alura’s assault on me been that, even though disrobing for me could be achieved with a single thought, I hadn’t even been able to summon the necessary brainpower to do it. I was too busy enjoying the crushing sensation of the young woman pressing herself hard up against me.

My hand moved up and took hold of one of Alura’s big breasts. I squeezed it. Then, with my other hand, I took her other tit and rubbed my thumb over her nipple. Alura moaned into my mouth as we kissed, thrusting her groin harder into my own crotch and lifting her leg so that the tip of my cock slid up and down against the opening to her sex.

I reached down, pushed my finger inside Alura, and felt that she was already wet and ready, hot and moist.

Finally, as Alura moved a step away from me, I wrestled the necessary brainpower to send my morphing cloak slithering to the floor around my ankles, so that the two of us were standing naked in the middle of the small washroom.

Lost momentarily in a blaze of lust, as I ran my eyes over Alura and stepped out of my boots, I was taken a little by surprise as she dropped smoothly to her knees. Pausing only to make sure her spider web-fine hair was pushed back from her face, the princess enveloped me in wet warmth.

I groaned. She was running her tongue around the tip.

“Don’t mind me,” she said.

Then Alura moved slowly down the length of my cock, swallowing the whole stretch down her throat in a deepthroat that would’ve had Mia Khalifa putting on her spectacles so that she could take notes.

I let the woman do her thing. I had learned enough in my time in Avalonia to know when it was best to let a horny woman, with the look that Alura had in her eyes, do whatever she wanted. Who was I to argue or get in the way of her rampant sexual appetite?

Alura sucked me off, every now and again gagging as the tip of my prick made contact with the back of her throat. Every time I heard the sound of her gag reflex, I found myself reaching forward and holding her head in position for just a second so that the princess was panting for breath when she pulled away from me.

“I told you, I’m no lady,” she whispered up at me, a string of drool connecting her lips to the end of my member.

Taking that to mean she’d like me to treat her a little rougher, I made an effort to press my cock into the back of her throat with every thrust, holding her head forward so that she was forced to try and breathe around my swollen member.

I stood in the middle of that bathroom-cum-sex dungeon as the princess of the Gemstone Elementals gave me one of the best blowjobs of my life—and that really was saying something these days, as each of the women that shared my bed had the skills to inhale front tail with the best of them.

Alura slurped and sucked on my cock like a woman who had something to prove, like she was planning on winning me over so that I’d impregnate her there and then. Every now and again, she would lean her head back to spit on the head and stroke it while she looked up at me with almost challenging eyes.

“You better get up here, Your Majesty,” I said, in a voice that was a little more broken than it might have been had my dick not been halfway down Alura’s throat, “the floor is no place for a member of the royal family to be after all.”

I helped Alura to her feet and kissed her, my slippery prick twitching as it slid up the inside of her gleaming legs.

Gently but irresistibly, I turned Alura one hundred and eighty degrees and pushed her forward so that she was holding onto one of the porcelain sinks attached to the wall. Alura spread her legs and opened her cheeks wide, all the better for me to see her glistening, wet crystalline pussy.

I knelt beside the sink and spat directly onto the Gemstone Elemental’s exposed opening, right in between the lips. The princess gasped, then gave a little moan of yearning. Without another second’s hesitation, I pressed my tongue into Alura’s tight pussy and began tonguing her like an ice-cream that was at risk of melting.

I continued for as long as I could keep it up, nibbling her clit and shoving my mouth over as much of her sex as I could.

After a few minutes, my cock felt so hard that I feared it might shatter like glass if I didn’t slip it into Alura soon. It felt as if it was actually vibrating with the need to slide it into her.

I pulled my finger out of Alura’s sex, where I had been reaching for the elusive G-spot, and lined my cock up with her glistening slot.

Slowly, I eased into her tight pussy until my balls were pressed against her clit. Then, with equally intense and excruciatingly delicious deliberation, I pulled out again.

Alura might’ve tried to say something at that juncture, but her words became a garbled string of meaningless sounds.

Well, maybe not meaningless. We were speaking the oldest language of all, the language that transcended cultures, races, and worlds.

No, not meaningless at all.

I could just see the side of Alura’s face from my position behind her. Her white-and-gold eyes were shut tight, and her teeth bared in a grimace of hunger and ecstasy. She groaned again, trying to say something.

“Uggghh,” she moaned.

“Don’t worry,” I breathed into her ear, “I get the gist.”

By some miracle, even as I began to lose myself, I managed to recall that we were fucking for a reason—another reason other than that it was awesome.

As I thrust into the Gemstone Elemental, faster and faster, as the two of us got more and more worked up, I pondered briefly on what spell I’d need for our mission into the Castle of Ascendance.

Personally, I thought I had enough firepower in my spell arsenal for now. The addition of the Blessed Zephyr healing spell had some of the support covered, but I could benefit from another spell that could benefit not just me but my friends as well.

My dick pressed deeper and harder into Alura’s tight center, and with every thrust, the princess let out a moan of authentic satisfaction.

“Fill me up,” she panted as I tried to sink myself deeper into her, as far as I could go. “Fill me up. Fuck me so that we’re one.”

With those words, came an idea, fizzling into the back of my sex-soaked brain.

A spell that would allow me to keep others from harm. Disguise them. Cloak them in a way that I could cloak myself, maybe?

I got no further than that. I was unable to elaborate further on it, such was the effect of Alura’s tight body under my fingers, and her tight pussy hugging my prick.

Everything took a backseat from then on. While Alura grabbed onto the sink for support, I grabbed onto Alura’s hips and rammed my prick into her again and again and again. The slap of wet, sweaty flesh, of my balls against her clitoris, and our labored breathing was the only sound.

Alura’s generous tits swayed as I fucked her from behind. Occasionally, I grabbed them, squeezing the nipples to elicit moans of high-pitched rapture from her.

With a suddenness that took us both by surprise, our orgasms assailed us.

Alura let out a low, keen wail and her legs almost buckled. I continued to thrust in and out of her, even as we came together, and my hot jizz sprayed over her pubic region as my prick popped out of her momentarily before I rammed it back home.

Before long, it was over. Our bucking, pulsing movements slowed and stopped.

We stayed pressed against one another, my stomach stuck to Alura’s sweaty back, while she leaned heavily on the cool porcelain sink.

“I wonder… I wonder if we were successful?” Alura panted.

“I’d say we were fucking successful.” I grinned. “If you don't think we were, then just give me two minutes and we’ll start at the beginning.”

Alura laughed and shook her head. “Don’t worry, Justin Mauler. You have more than satisfied me, as usual. I mean, I wonder if we have succeeded in creating a new spell for you?”

“Oh. Yeah. Right.”

While the princess made herself a little more presentable, using the wash basin, I reached into the pocket of my cloak and pulled out my spell book. It took only a moment’s rifling through the pages to see that we had, indeed, been successful.

TRANSMOGRIFY ALLIES (Gemstone Elemental) - Turns an ally into a gemstone elemental.

I grinned and held the book out to Alura so that she could read it for herself.

“Not so helpful for me, is it?” she said good-naturedly.

“Maybe not,” I admitted, “but you got to have all the fun in making it. The others didn’t get that, did they?”

The Gemstone Princess put her long, gleaming leg down and stepped toward me. She placed her arms around my neck and kissed me on the cheek, pressing her still naked form against mine.

Even though we had just finished fucking like a pair of animals in this abandoned washroom, I felt my body responding to her of its own accord.

“True, Justin,” she said. “Very true. And what is life without a bit of fun, hm?”

Chapter 6

The royal summons came by United Spectral Messenger Company not two days later and gave those who had been invited one day to organize their transportation to the Castle of Ascendance. The message, read out by the Prophet King of the Gemstone Elementals, stated that anyone who had been invited to the gathering and who did not attend would be looked on unfavorably by both the Queen and the Arcane Council.

I thought that this was a poor attempt at a subtle threat, but then Alura’s father had read on, “The only mitigating circumstance for any invitee not to attend is unexpected death, which is, in accordance with the new litigation set down by the Arcane Council and finalized by Her Royal Highness Queen Hagatha of Avalonia, also the penalty for blatant disobedience of this summons.”

“Jolly good!” Reginald Chaosbane said brightly, clapping his hands together and then rubbing them. “Well, that makes things nice and easy then, doesn’t it? Probable execution if we go to the Castle of Attendance and conduct our little scheme, definite execution if we hang around here twiddling our thumbs and playing Worms & Kobolds. I’ve always considered it a characteristic of a strong, confident and, most importantly, fair government to take choices out of a decision. Jolly good! Let’s get packing, then!”

The plan had been tweaked just a little from its conception a few days before. Obviously, it would look slightly suspicious if all those who had been summoned from different lands and worlds arrived at the Castle of Ascendence on the same ship. The party would be broken up a little so that the arrivals were staggered. This would ensure that the suspicions of the guards—never something that was easy to quantify or predict at the best of times—would be less likely to be aroused.

Acer Blade, Alura, Odette Scaleblade, and I would be arriving slightly after the rest of the rebel contingent.

“I’m hoping,” Alura’s father had said to us the day before our journey, “that it will look like I have sent for you as a last-minute thought. Arriving with a couple of others who are representing more mysterious races or smaller lands—Odette as a dragonkin and Acer from the Cutter Clans—will look like you’ve just caught a convenient ride with those expected to get here last.”

“That sounds like a fine plan, Father,” Alura said, acquiescing to her father’s request like the dutiful daughter she was.

“By getting there slightly late, the council will already be busy welcoming and mingling,” I said, “which should allow us to access the castle with a bit more ease.”

“Precisely, Creation Mage,” the Prophet King said.

“And what of this old one, this Gertrude?” Acer Blade said shortly, her all-silver eyes glittering as she swept them over us. “Where will this inside woman of yours be?”

“She will be waiting—you may rest easy on that score,” the Gemstone King said. “She made it her habit, this last week or so, to take walks along the docks to clear her head and think. From what Reginald Chaosbane has told me, she is an amiable old soul and makes regular gifts to the guards in the form of brownies and other baked treats. I believe that this engenders her with a certain leeway among the guards at the Castle of Ascendance.”

“That should take the edge off for the poor bastards once they figure out that the old dear had smuggled us in and that they’re a few Creation Mages short of a deck,” I said.

The Prophet King nodded and gave me a small, bright smile.

And so, that was how we found ourselves sitting in a small single-masted sloop piloted by none other than Isobel Galeflint.

We had exchanged well wishes, goodbyes, and good lucks with all the other invitees of the Queen’s meeting, who had been taking off from the docks of the Castle of Ascendance in dribs and drabs since early that morning. In return, we had been given a few claps on the shoulders and a few earnest goodbyes ourselves.

When it had come for us to actually set sail ourselves, we had climbed into the boat after exchanging a lot of kisses and hugs with the women who were to be left behind.

“Don’t forget to get us something while you’re away on your trip, darling,” Cecilia Chillgrave said, after she had kissed me.

“It’s a mission we’re going on, Cecilia, not a vacation,” I laughed. “I’m not sure if I’m going to have time to visit the gift shop and grab you a Castle of Ascendance tea towel or fridge magnet.”

“That’s a shame,” said Mort dolefully as he gave me a somewhat limp-wristed handshake. “I’ve got a bit of a fondness for fridge magnets. I always try to snag one from a client’s fridge if I have to make a house call.”

I shivered at the idea of this feared and renowned bounty hunter snuffing some poor bastard’s lights out before peeling off some awful, tacky fridge magnet from their refrigerator.

“Remember, Justin,” the albino-looking Chaosbane said to me, “when in doubt, always go for the aorta.”

“Right, yep, thanks for that, Mort,” I said.

Leah, Madame Xel, Janet, and Enwyn all gave us hugs.

“You’ll excuse us if we refrain from slobbering all over you, will you, bud?” Damien said sarcastically.

“I can settle for a fist-bump,” I said.

“Sold,” the Fire Mage said.

“Look after the ladies while I’m away, Nigel,” I said, turning to the Wind Mage.

“Will do, Justin,” Nigel replied. “Plenty of yoga should help to keep their minds calm and their bodies… uh… flexible.”

I laughed. “You dirty bastard, don’t pretend you do those classes for them for the good of their mental wellbeing.”

Nigel snorted and went slightly pink under his spectacles.

Bradley and Rick wished us all good luck and then, finally, we were on our way.

Isobel had steered us through the impregnable-looking portcullis and the river that flowed out from the Stronghold of the Twin Spirits. Once we were out on the open seas, I activated my glamor. I only selected its first-tier power, so that anyone who didn’t know me would be fooled while my friends would be able to tell that it was me.

“How long will it take to get there?” I asked Isobel.

The piratical babe was standing in the stern manning the tiller. With her bright crimson hair flying, the gold brocade on her sexy cut-off admiral’s jacket glinting, and her eyes cold and resolute, she looked every inch the Pirate Queen that she was.

She grinned at me and inhaled long and deep.

“Ah, the salt tang!” she said. “It’s been too fuckin’ long, too fuckin’ long! What was that you asked me, Justin?”

“How long is it going to take us to sail to the Castle of Ascendance?” I asked again.

Isobel gave me an enigmatic grin. “How long is a piece of string?”

“That’s not helpful at all.”

Isobel laughed, looking up at the high cloud that floated up in the azure vault above us.

“Well, you’re really asking me two questions there,” she said.

“Am I?” I asked. “That’s news to me.”

“Aye, ye are, though ye might not know it. You’re asking me how long it’ll take us, but you’re forgetting that we’re going to be traveling through space as well as time, ye see.”

“Good point,” Alura said. She had walked up to the rear of the little vessel to hear what we were chatting about. “It’s easy to forget that we’re in the Spectral Realm here. With the wind in our hair and the warm spray of the ocean speckling our cheeks, it’s quite hard to remember that we are in a world that only just overlaps the world of the living.”

“That’s exactly it, Princess,” Isobel Galeflint said, nodding her magnificent head. “You ain’t in the realm that you call home, which means that we’re going to have to take a slightly circuitous route straight through a void to get back to Avalonia.”

“A slightly circuitous route straight though a void?” I asked. “That sounds like one of those nonsensical oxymorons, like ‘alone together’ or ‘clearly misunderstood’ but on a fucking galactic scale.”

Acer Blade had crept tentatively over to us. “It sounds like something that’s going to make me more nauseous than I feel already.”

“You do look a little green around the gills for one who’s supposed to be a bit of a dangerous badass, don’t ye?” Isobel said with a smirk, looking at the silver-haired Blade sister.

Acer said nothing. It seemed like it was taking a deal of her concentration not to throw up.

“She’s got a point, though,” I said. “Is this going to be one of those dimensional shifts that leaves our insides feeling all scrambled up, or is it going to be fairly smooth sailing?”

“It’s very much a case of each to their own, I’m afraid,” said Isobel with a gleeful wink. “But to answer your question in its most fundamental term: it won’t take us long, not on this side of the void at any rate. What’s more, though the others from this little expedition who are already in the world of the living might feel like it’s taken us hours to arrive, the time they are experiencing will pass us by as we travel through the void between worlds. Does that make sense to ye, Justin?”

I thought about this for a second or two. “Not really, no.”

Isobel laughed. “Good. I’d be worried if it did!”

“I’m willing to take your word for it and trust you, though.” I turned my eyes toward the bow and the horizon we were aiming for.

“That’s mighty fine to hear, Mauler, my old mate,” the Pirate Queen said amiably to me. “Because I’ll be sailing our asses straight into the eye of a whirlpool, and I know how mortals can get a bit jumpy about such things.”

“What?” Alura said, but Isobel Galeflint’s eyes were fixed on the horizon now and she sounded like she was humming some jaunty sea shanty to herself and did not answer.

The sloop sped along, driven by a gathering wind that hummed through the rigging and set the sail to bulging like Tony Soprano’s gut in a tank top. There wasn’t a lot of talk between the four of us on board. I figured the mention of voids and whirlpools had a lot to do with that.

It might have been an hour before Isobel Galeflint raised her hand and uttered a cry that made Acer, Alura, Odette, and I look up.

On the horizon, barely discernible from the pale blue sky behind it, was a mist of flying foam.

“That, presumably, would be the whirlpool?” Odette Scaleblade said in her quasi-French accent.

“Got it in one, Madame Scaleblade, got it in one!” crowed the Pirate Queen, evidently relishing the thought of what was to come.

“Wonderful,” Odette said woodenly.

Isobel looked down from where she had been staring at the horizon and gave Odette a long stare.

“Ye know,” she said, “ye really must tell me where you get your outfits from? I’ve been thinking of changing up my look, and I think the whole gypsy fortune-teller thing ye have going on there, is sexy as hell.”

Odette didn’t smile, but she looked pleased nonetheless.

“Come now, come now, Admiral Galeflint,” she said politely, indicating the other woman’s skimpy outfit. “I imagine that dressing as you do has many benefits. No doubt any red-blooded male with his salt finds your getup most alluring? I’m sure that it buys you precious seconds during fights.”

Isobel laughed happily. “That it does, that it does, Madame Scaleblade. Why, the number of stupid fuckers I’ve cut to ribbons, all because they have paused before trying to strike me down, as they figure out whether to take out their swords or their peckers, would astound you.”

“You know what,” Madame Scaleblade said, “I don’t think it would.”

We sailed on, heading dead straight for the foaming mist off our bow. As we drew closer and closer, I began to hear a low roaring sound, like some gargantuan and breathless beast bellowing without pause.

The sound of the whirlpool that Isobel said would take us back to the land of the living.

As the noise rose and rose, a few nagging doubts about the solidity of this plan began to sneak into the back of my mind.

“This whirlpool,” I yelled, “we’re not going to drown in the time it takes for us to pass through or anything, are we? I know that you’re a specter, but if you’re anything like Barry Chillgrave, this is the sort of little detail that sometimes gets overlooked.”

“Oh, shiver my timbers, I never thought of that!” Isobel said.

I looked at her. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

Isobel’s beautiful face broke into a wicked smile. “Aye! I am just fucking kidding with ye, handsome man. I’d never say fucking shiver my timbers! What do you take me for?”

“And the drowning part of things?” I asked. “That’s more what I referring to with that ‘you must be fucking kidding me’.”

“Aye, aye, you’ll be fine,” Isobel said, waving a hand. “Besides, it’s too late to worry about anything, even if I had cocked something up.”

“Why’s that?” I yelled, shielding my eyes from a sheet of stinging spray that had just enveloped the sloop.

“Because the whirlpool has us now!” Isobel cried gleefully, and she raised her hands and let go of the tiller.

The world slowed as our little ship dipped down and right into the edge of the bowl of water that led into the black abyss of the whirlpool’s heart. For a moment, I thought that my mind had gone into a hyperbolic state of some kind, giving me a heightened awareness that made it seem like everything was slowing down when in fact I was taking in information far quicker and with more clarity than I might ordinarily do.

Then, I realized that this was not so. Time really was slowing—the seconds stretching out like a spoonful of molasses that had been poured off the edge of a building.

“I feel… fucking… weird,” I said to Odette and Acer.

The Blade sister looked at me. Blinked very slowly. Once. Twice.

“You look… fucking… weird,” Acer replied, her voice undulating like it was autotuned.

If I looked weird, it was nothing as to how she was looking. As we plummeted with absurd slowness over the lip of the tunnel that presumably led down to the ocean floor, Acer’s facial features distorted and scrunched together as if they were made of plasticine. Her usually quite nice-looking nose flattened like a tomato that’s just been run over by a steamroller, her bright silver hair waved out behind her head like the tail of some mercurial sperm.

Surprisingly, she didn’t seem too worried about this.

I could hear Isobel Galeflint laughing fit to burst. I tried to turn around to ask her what was so funny, but even though I felt my neck muscles move and my head turn ninety degrees, my eyes stayed where they were. I had the awful impression that, had there been a mirror handy, I would have seen my own eyeballs waving in front of me like the stalky eyes of some humanoid snail.

“FuuuUUUUccCCk,” I said in a voice that came out like garbled radio static.

Darkness fell as we dropped into the eye of the whirlpool. The roar was encompassing now, all pervasive. Weirdly, the spray had ceased, which was odd seeing as we should technically have been surrounded by the crushing ocean.

Abruptly, the roar of the churning water died away to a whisper, then to nothing. We were spinning or flipping, or something.

My organs felt as if they had decided to go on vacation, away from the other parts of my body. My spine moved through me like a dancing python, while my kidneys headed south to my feet and my stomach wandered aimlessly around my chest cavity.

And none of this caused me any pain whatsoever.

It was disconcerting to say the least.

Nothing happened for the longest—or perhaps, the shortest—time.

Then, nothing continued to happen.

Then, the world flooded back with the same shocking abruptness with which a bucket of water can wake a sleeping drunk.

BOOM.

A roar, but not of water. It was the sound of air rushing into a world-sized void inside my head. Blinding light. My lungs inflated.

And we were bobbing on the waters of another sea—an estuary.

There was a heaving, splattering noise. I moved my whirling vision upward to see Acer Blade leaning over the side of the sloop. She was throwing up with real gusto.

I thought about going over to hold her hair out of the way or pat her back, like a gentleman would have done, but I doubted my legs would obey me just then. Currently, I was under the illusion that my knees had been put on back to front.

“How do you feel?” Isobel Galeflint asked me.

I took a breath and looked around. Thankfully, everything obeyed in the way that it should, my neck rotating my head and my eyeballs coming along for the ride.

“Hey, what the hell?” I asked.

Isobel was leaning nonchalantly against the stern of the sloop, one hand resting on the handle of the tiller, just as she had been before. Only now, she was…

“A ghost, yeah,” the Pirate Queen said, noticing the gaze I was running over her. “Not quite as sexy, maybe, in this world, but pretty fucking scary. Don’t ye reckon?”

She had that right, although she had still managed to retain a hint of her undeniable sex appeal even in her new ghostly green and translucent state.

Isobel’s previously crimson hair now blew in a wind that was not of this world, like a shredded flag of a burning ship. Her sea gray eyes were now black holes sunk in wax, her pristine uniform little better than the tattered rags of a drowned sailor.

“I don’t know,” I said, clearing my throat and trying to hitch a grin to my face, “I think I’ve seen worse.”

Isobel grinned. “Doesn’t it hurt your brain to think that you bedded me, then?” she said, giving me another one of her wicked smiles, which was a great deal more menacing in this world than it had been in the Spectral Realm.

I puffed out my cheeks. I was almost back to feeling like myself. Almost.

“You know what,” I said, “you have to question your sanity when the knowledge that you’ve fucked a ghost barely makes the top ten list of the most bizarre things you’ve ever done.”

“Why does - why does that happen?” Alura asked. Somehow, the Gemstone Princess looked just as good as she usually did.

Isobel shrugged. “That’s just the way of things. The dead and the living inhabit not just different worlds but different plains, so far as I can tell. Our bodies have long since faded from this place, but the memories of those bodies linger on. Bit of a shame, really, I had a killer rack back in the day.”

“Where exactly are we, Admiral Galeflint?” Odette Scaleblade asked, getting a little unsteadily to her feet, but looking around with her usual calm assurance and smoky eyes.

“We’re at the mouth of the river that leads up to the Castle of Ascendance, some twenty miles or so distance,” Isobel told her. “I would’ve tried to get a little closer, but inter-dimensional travel can be a slippery fish at the best of times, and there’d be nothing to be gained by popping back into this plain of existence only to have my sloop crash through the roof of some fisherman’s shack on the bank.”

“Probably smart to make sure that as few people see us arrive as possible,” I said. “Not much point in going to all this trouble of disguising and arriving late if we’re spotted straight away by a member of the Arcane Council who happens to be out feeding the gulls or taking his morning constitutional or something.”

“Still, twenty miles sailing upriver,” Acer Blade chipped in at that moment, “won’t that cost us a lot of time? I’m no sailor—”

“You’re shitting me,” Isobel Galeflint snorted.

“—but it seems that going upriver would probably take a lot longer than coming down one, no?” Acer continued, ignoring Isobel’s remark. She took a swig of water from a flask and spit over the side to clear her mouth.

“Ah, but ye are forgetting one thing, my dangerous and spewy sailor,” Isobel said to the silver-haired woman. “Just as those denizens of the Spectral Realm have to adopt their ghostly forms when walking under the sun of the living world, so do our ships take on a different capability. We weren’t known as Sky Pirates for no reason.”

That’s when I remembered, and when I did, I was astounded that such a thing could have slipped my mind, that ghostly pirate ships traditionally floated in the air. We’d all boarded one, under fire, back at the Chaosbane ranch, hadn’t we?

Isobel flashed me a knowing wink and then lay her hand on the tiller of the sloop and caressed it with her spectral fingers.

An eldritch glow spread out from the place on the wood where she had run her fingertips. It grew like a particularly virulent and luminous mold. Soon, the whole vessel was wreathed in a blueish-green supernatural light.

As the eldritch glow closed over the tip of the mast, the sloop itself transformed, taking on the look of a small sailing boat that had been lost at sea. The sails resembled Swiss cheese, while the rigging looked to have mostly disintegrated altogether. The wood of the deck was tarnished and scuffed, though it felt sturdy underfoot, and the figurehead looked like nothing less than a gargoyle with leprosy.

“Pirates are such show-offs,” I muttered to Isobel, who just grinned.

While I could appreciate these aesthetic changes, the real eye-opener came when the sloop rose dripping out of the water and hovered about two yards up above the gently rolling swell.

“Upriver or down river, it’s all the same to a sky pirate,” said Isobel. “Now, let’s be away.”

She gave the tiller of the sloop a little pat, and the boat took off with the alacrity of a dingy being powered by a fifty-horsepower outboard. We zoomed smoothly over the sea, heading for the mouth of the river.

“Aren’t we going to draw just a little bit of attention?” Acer Blade asked. She was looking better already, now that we weren’t actually sailing, and some color was coming back to her caramel-tinted cheeks.

“What’re ye on about?” Isobel asked shortly.

“Well, we’re flying in a fucking boat, aren’t we?” the Blade sister replied acidly.

Isobel opened her mouth and then closed it. “Fair point, lass,” she said grudgingly, “but we can deal with that right enough.”

The Pirate Queen slapped the side of the boat, and a shiver ran through the hull. A layer of color, or it might have been more accurate to say a layer of substance, faded out of the body of the sloop.

“There,” Isobel said in a satisfied voice, “we’ve a cloak over us now. Won’t nobody who ain’t on this vessel be able to see it. We’re a proper little ghost ship now.”

Chapter 7

We zipped along, making good time if the sun was anything to go by, without any fisherman, pearl diver, or cruising sea creature noticing us at all. Admittedly, there was a moment when Isobel almost crashed our sloop through the mast of a fishing vessel that was bobbing at anchor in mid river, but judging by the number of empty bottles that covered the deck of the fishing boat, I doubted any of the fishermen manning the tub would have trusted the evidence of their own eyes, even if we’d popped into being right above them.

When I mentioned this to Isobel, the sky pirate smiled a mischievous and reminiscent smile.

“Aye, we used to do that back in the day, before ghosts and poltergeists and the like became more common in the land of the living,” she said. “We’d find some lone fishermen or whalers or grindylow hunters, whip up a bit of atmospheric fog, and then remove our cloaks and appear to them. Used to scare the livin’ piss out of them. It was a great laugh.”

It was when we were about ten miles upriver that it happened.

“Well, well, well, what the fucking hell do we have here then?” Isobel said from behind me.

I had been staring out to the far bank, thinking of nothing in particular and watching the patchwork of green and brown countryside unfolding past my vision. I stirred myself and looked around.

There was a group of three flying vessels behind us. They were roughly the same size as our sloop and were gradually gaining on us.

The gut feeling that I got in my stomach told me one thing and one thing only, before I even asked Isobel.

These were not friends of ours.

“Who are they?” I asked the Pirate Queen.

“I don’t know…” Isobel said. She was peering behind us, the sunken pits of her eyes locked on the three ships that were following us. “There are only two types of people that would have the capabilities and the balls to follow us: ghosts or Death Mages. I’ve some skillfully drawn symbols along the sides of the hull of this boat, symbols which even the drunkest poltergeist would be able to read belonging to me. No dead man with anything resembling self-preservation would come after this boat.”

“Which means that we’ve got some Death Mages on our tail,” I said, my jaw clenching. “Gods-dammit, but we haven’t run into any of these cheddarfaces for long enough. What the fuck do they want with us now?”

Isobel did not answer. She looked to be counting under her breath. She turned her head after a minute and scanned the river up ahead, then looked to either side of us.

“What is it?” Alura asked, walking back when she sensed that something was amiss.

I told her, pointing out the three ships that were following behind us, and watched as her face darkened.

“And you’re sure they’re following us?” the Gemstone Princess asked the Pirate Queen.

“Aye, following us, undoubtedly,” Isobel said. “Fuckers are gaining on us too.”

“Are we going to be doing some fighting?” Acer Blade said, coming up to stand with us at the stern and cast her own molten silver eyes back at the pursuers. “Because I’ve a lot of pent-up aggression that I wouldn’t mind letting off the leash, let me tell you.”

She gave me a look, which I interpreted to mean that that pent up fury had a little to do with me.

“Come on, don’t be annoyed at me having you locked up,” I said, with a winning smile. “It wasn’t like you were in the Eldritch Prison or anything. You weren’t even locked in your cell half the time from what I saw.”

“That might be so,” Acer said, “and the actual captivity didn’t bother me in the least, but I had to listen to my sister and that dude Thunderstone fucking about four times a day. Tell me that wouldn’t get to you, Justin Mauler.”

“Four times a day?” I said, raising an eyebrow.

“At least!” Acer said vehemently.

“Shit, I guess I see where Janet gets it from,” I said.

“Now, I know that you liveuns are skillful fighters,” Isobel said, “but this little sloop is no war galley. Against three other ships her size, she’ll be matchwood in no time at all, even with you lot and me defending her. Then these assholes can pick us off in the water, quite literally like fish in a barrel.”

“What’re you thinking then, pirate?” Acer said shortly.

“I’m thinking that we’ll swing to port in about ten seconds and make for that large belt of woodland just over there,” Isobel said. “I’ll drop down and try and lose them in there. If you can squeeze off a few spells and try to take these bastards out, so much the better, but we have to lose them as quickly as we can. We’re not far from the Castle of Ascendance, but I can’t be dropping you off there with a trio of Death Mage sloops on our tail.”

There was no chance for any of us to voice any opinions of our own. Isobel swung the tiller hard to the left, and the sloop veered right, taking on some height as it did so.

Alura went reeling, but I managed to catch her before she crashed into the side bulwark, steadying myself with my other hand. Odette and Acer kept their feet, although the dragonkin looked for a moment like she might trip over her numerous skirts.

We shot toward the riverbank on our port side, the sloop rattling in protest as Isobel squeezed as much speed as she could out of it. I looked off the stern, wondering whether I should try a pot shot with a Blazing Bolt or a Rain of Toads at our hunters. However, the knowledge that our position would be revealed to anyone who might be watching the river on behalf of the Arcane Council made me hold fire.

We ripped, in a rush of wind, toward the riverbank and then blasted over it. The speed of our passage blew mud up from the shore as we headed toward the edge of the woods that lay some two-hundred yards from the shoreline.

“C’mon, you hulk o’ driftwood, c’mon…” I heard Isobel urge the sloop as we crested the tops of the outlying trees and started flying over the canopy of the forest.

Behind us, the enemy sloops were gaining, slowly reeling us in like three whaling boats that had harpooned a leviathan and were bringing it to bay.

When we were five hundred yards deep over the forest, our boat gave an awful shudder. A lurch. It flickered.

“What is this fresh new hell?” I asked slowly, over the rush of the wind, touching tentatively at the side of the sloop.

Isobel’s phantasmic face was suddenly tense as a harp string.

“By the balls of Blackbeard!” she hissed. “No!”

“What?” Odette demanded.

Then, to our dismay as well as her own, Isobel flickered like a console game with a frayed HDMI cord connection.

“Shit!” she said, flickering tremulously. “I think that, as the Universal Magic is failing, I’m being stripped away from the world of the livin’! Shit!”

“She’s being torn from this world and sent back to the Spectral Realm,” Alura said under her breath.

“Son of a bi—” Isobel said, but then she was gone.

Just like that. As quick as snapping my fingers.

In an instant, without the Pirate Queen standing at the helm, the single-masted sloop felt very much like it had about as much business flying above a forest of trees as the average grand piano did.

I looked up and noticed that the eldritch glow was beginning to fade from the vessel, starting from the very tip of its single mast.

“I have a feeling,” I said as our craft began to lose height, “that this is going to end poorly.”

“You fucking think so, do y—” Acer Blade said sharply.

The rest of what she had to say was lost in a cacophony of splintering tree limbs, whipping branches, and the rush of a million leaves being blasted apart as our sloop dipped below the roof of the forest and smashed into the canopy.

What a ride.

Luckily, the four us that hadn’t vanished into the ether all had the presence of mind to grab onto the biggest and most solid part of the vessel—the mast—and hold on for dear life.

As the prow of the sloop punched through a tree limb as thick as a man and shattered, I used my Flame Barrier spell to form a rough circular barricade around us. The ship broke apart on its descent through the trees, and I heard the hiss and crackle of smaller branches burning and splintering away as they came in contact with my potent Fire Magic spell.

Finally, after what felt like an hour but was probably no more than eight seconds, we landed with a crunch and thud of pulverized timber spars on the forest floor. Once I was sure that we weren’t about to be brained by any fallen logs that were coming late to the party, I vanished my Flame Barrier.

“Who would have thought a small ship could fall out of the sky with such grace and agility,” I said, getting to my feet and helping Odette up.

Alura rolled her eyes as she stood up and gave me a stern look, which was tempered by an exasperated smile.

I held out my hand for Acer, but the Metal Mage was already on her feet. To give the impression that I hadn’t just been left hanging, I pointed at the wreck of the sloop that lay all around us.

“And the ship’s barely got a scratch on her,” I said.

“Come and take a look at this,” said Alura urgently.

I walked over to where the Gemstone Princess was standing, peering through the gaps between some branches.

“Is that for real?” I said in a slightly awed voice, pushing my way through the thick undergrowth and out into a wide glade.

It was either real, or we had crash landed into the middle of one hell of an elaborate movie set.

In the middle of the glade was a model village all made out of giant toadstools, each toadstool building being about as high as my waist. There were houses and shops, workshops, and even a little blacksmith. There were different colored ones, some with chimneys and some without, some with windows thrown open, some thatched, some larger ones in which I could just make out mushrooms hanging to dry in the rafters, and some with birds’ nests sitting on top of them.

Through the town, a little stream ran. It was the variety of musical, gentle stream that would have been called a babbling brook by that dangerous brand of unhinged old ladies who knit doilies, wear a lot of pink, and are forever offering people tea. Large dandelions lined the beaten dirt streets like ornamental trees.

It was pleasant and unreal, in an It’s a Small World After All way—only without the song, thank fuck.

Even as my three companions and I stood looking around in wide-eyed wonder and felt a wash of calm flow over us, I observed little faces peering out from doorways and the corners of the buildings. They were incongruously ugly faces, for how pretty the town was, looking like unscrubbed potatoes that had just been pulled from the earth. I caught eyes with one of the figures and was rewarded with a shy smile before the face whisked back out of sight into the gloom of one of the mushroom drying barns.

The place would have been a hell of a lot nicer if, at that precise moment, ten robed necromancers hadn’t come bursting through the trees on the other side of the glade.

They bellowed with moronic delight as they spotted the four of us. Death Magic glowed a venomous green in their hands, and the promise of carnage shone in their eyes.

“And… here we go,” I said, making my shimmering black and white mixed staff appear in my hands.

Unfortunately, the first spell that the Death Mages loosed landed like a smoldering absinthe-colored coal in the thatch of one of the little houses. There was a pause, and then the house exploded in an expanding cloud of smoke that formed itself into the shape of a laughing skull.

“Take cover—that stuff disperses quickly, but is highly toxic for a few seconds!” Odette yelled, ducking another curse and scurrying off down a street of little shops.

As bits of mushroom house rained down in sizzling chunks, Alura held out her hand and blasted one of our foes right in the face with an intense Light Beam. Such mana did she put behind it, that the man was thrown off his feet, his face blistered like he’d spent a month in a sunbed. He was tossed backward so hard that he was impaled brutally on a jagged snapped-off branch.

Not wanting to find out just how toxic the gas was, I threw myself over the roof of a miniature chandlers shop just as half a dozen little figures crawled coughing out of the wreckage of the house that had been blown to bits. They staggered for a few seconds and then dropped convulsing to the floor, vomiting up their entrails in awful gouts of blood.

“That ain’t right,” I growled.

I was on the verge of tossing a couple of Magma Bombs in the direction of the nine remaining necromancers, when I suddenly realized that this toy town was actually the home of a race of people—I couldn’t just go blowing it up to ice some bad guys.

“Fucking finesse it is,” I said to myself.

I stuck my hand around the corner of the house I was taking cover behind and used my Paralyzing Zap spell on a dude in a robe who was running past my hiding spot on his way to try and smoke Odette.

The Paralyzing Zap caught him in mid-stride and stopped him like a taser. Before I could finish him off, there was a blue of silver and Acer streaked past me. The Metal Mage conjured metal steps in mid-air and ran up them. She launched herself in a perfect front flip over the stunned Death Mage and then a bullwhip of blinding mercury snaked out from her mouth.

It was a tongue, I realized in amazement.

The liquid metal tongue slashed the man across the torso. Acer landed in a crouch, sucked her massive metal tongue back into her mouth, and the stunned necromancer fell into two neatly severed pieces. His guts splattered wetly into the dust.

“Whoa,” I said.

Two down eight to go.

One of the Death Mages had used some of his magic to reanimate the corpses of the six little humanoids that had fallen victim to the noxious skull gas. They had risen like a six-pack of pint-sized zombies and headed toward Odette. The dragonkin had her Bone Spear in her hand. She was wheeling around to dismember the mini zombies as they reached out clutching hands for her.

I saw a necromancer looking to capitalize on Odette’s distracted state, so I brought a rather large tree down on him using my Telekinesis powers. Unfortunately, I misjudged the size of the tree, and it knocked down half of one of the small mushroom drying barns, making me feel guilty for just as long as it took for one of the other necromancers to try and kill me with a spell that shrieked like a banshee as it headed toward me.

“Fuck you!” I yelled, sacrificing a Lightning Skink to the oncoming Death Magic. The Skink soaked up the potent spell, vanished in a greasy puff of ether, and then Acer once more appeared seemingly out of nowhere. There was a flurry of movement, and the woman who’d fired the curse at me was suddenly impaled on a spike shoved somewhere extremely intimate.

“That chick really has some issues,” I said.

Alura had let loose one of her Crystal Pups, and the magical beast had herded one of the necromancers up onto the roof a little house. With a cry, his foot went through the thatch, and he started screaming, almost as if whatever lived inside the house was attacking him from the knee down. The man continued to scream, but not for long. A streak of silver, and his bottom jaw was ripped away.

Acer again. She had transformed her hand into a grapnel which had fired across the space dividing her and the man on the roof, the chain unspooling behind it from out of the sleeve of her biker leathers.

From there on out, while Alura, Odette, and I tried to dispatch our enemies with as little collateral damage as possible, Acer went through the remaining Death Mages with all the tact and care of a tornado through a trailer park.

Blood sprayed across the white walls of the toadstool houses. Men and women were torn to shreds or else sliced cleanly into pieces that would have fitted handily into a carry-on bag.

I managed to sneak up on one necromancer and encase his head with my Crystallize spell, effectively asphyxiating him instantly, while nearby Acer used a nasty spell to summon spinning hand-long razor blades into the air to carve out a man’s lungs while he was still alive.

As my enemy dropped dead to the ground, his head encased in zirconia, I couldn’t help but think that I had either been very lucky or more skilled than I had thought when Acer and her sisters had met me and my crew in battle.

Odette and Alura, working in tandem, herded two of the last three necromancers against the wall of one of the mushroom drying barns. Once they were back-to-back, Odette used her Bones of the Earth spell to bring sharp fingers of fossilized bone punching up through the soil to impale the hapless duo through the thighs.

The woman and the man screamed in unison, a horrible high-pitched wailing.

“Just goes to prove that everyone can hold a tune,” I said, “but when it comes to doing something with it…”

The noise did not last long though. As I was searching for the final Death Mage, in came Acer like a knife block caught in a wild gale and took off both their faces—their faces, not their heads—with twin slashes of a glowing red axe that had appeared from somewhere. Both necromancers fell backward, flattening the barn they had been pushed up against.

There was a rustle and crash behind me. The last surviving necromancer was doing the smart thing, from his point of view, and fleeing into the trees. As he went, he fired off a venomous pale blue spell that blew apart a small house to try and cover his tracks.

“I’ll get him,” Acer said assuredly, and sprinted after him like a panther after an unfortunate villager.

I stood panting and surveyed the wreckage. It had been a short fight, but a fairly bloody and destructive one for all that. A few of the toadstool shops were burning, the fungi walls letting off a thick black smoke that smelled quite delicious, while emitting popping blue sparks.

All credit went to Acer Blade. The Metal Mage had said that she had some aggression to work off and, judging by the liberal scattering of Death Mage body parts around the area, she had done just that.

Odette and Alura smiled over at me, Alura wiping a streak of someone else’s blood from her crystalline face.

I looked down and puffed out my cheeks, and it was only then that I realized that the slight tingling sensation that I had when my portly, crusty disguise was on was no longer prickling my skin. The disguise must have been affected when the magical surge that had vanished Isobel Galeflint hit us.

I made a mental note to restore it just before we entered the Castle of Ascendance.

As my eyes roved around the little village, with its twee toadstool houses, and took in the handful of little gnome bodies lying forlorn and broken upon the ground, I felt my blood boiling.

“Shit, what is this place and what did they do to deserve these necromancer assholes coming in here and forcing us to throw down with them?” I asked myself frustratedly.

“We are gnomes, sir,” came a squeaky little voice from my right. “And this is our gnome village.”

I looked down and saw that a gnome with highlighter yellow hair had slipped out from around the edge of one of the waist-high houses. She was dressed in a gown that, essentially, looked to be made of a mole with the squishy bits scooped out of it. Strangely, her accent was almost identical to that of south Texas.

“A gnome village, huh?” I said. “I’ve never had the pleasure of visiting one before. I’m really sorry that these cloaked assholes wrecked it like they did. Me and my friends really didn’t want a fight, but you know how it goes sometimes.”

The gnome nodded her golf ball-sized head.

“What do you guys do here?” I asked, watching as a gnome bucket chain was started to try and quench the fire that was gutting a shop that looked to be filled with tiny pipes.

“We have been mostly twiddling our thumbs, sir,” said the gnome woman, “because, for some reason, our special green thumbs, which allow us to grow some of the most magical psychedelic mushrooms in Avalonia, have started to wear off.”

I bit my lip. Sounded worryingly like a case of Universal Magic fade.

“When you crashed through the trees, we assumed that you had fallen from the sky because of a similar problem,” the gnome said, seeming to read my thoughts.

“Sounds like we were lucky you didn’t hack us apart as soon as we landed,” I said. “I know how drug dealers—how mushroom farmers back in my home world would react to some strangers wandering across their grow operation.”

“We thought about it, sir,” the gnome said placidly. “Then the other whoppers—that’s what we call the freakishly tall, sir—arrived, and we thought it best to let you kill each other.”

“Good thinking,” I said.

“Justin,” Acer said from my left, “I’ve got a prisoner.”

Acer appeared from the trees, shoving a robed figure in front of her.

I looked down to excuse myself from my tiny companion, but the gnome woman had vanished.

“He’s alive,” I observed.

“Yeah, why would he not be?” Acer asked.

“No reason, I just… You know, I didn’t think you were doing that today, that’s all. Didn’t look like you were in a keeping them alive kind of mood.”

Acer gave me a steely look. With her all-silver eyes, it couldn’t have gotten much steelier.

Using my ever-handy Flame Barrier Spell, I formed a glowing hot Bowie knife in my hand.

“Bring him here,” I said to Acer.

Acer had used some sort of metal spell to meld cuffs around the necromancer’s hands and had shackled them behind his back. She pushed him over to me and, even though he must have weighed thirty pounds more than her, she manhandled him into a kneeling position.

“Look, man, I swear to you, I don’t know shit,” the necromancer said promptly, cringing as held the flaming knife I had conjured out in front of his face.

With an almost supernatural ability, gnomes had seemingly seeped out of the very air itself and ringed us round. They were staring at the prisoner with an intensity that, had I been in his size elevens, I would have found very uncomfortable.

“You don’t know shit,” I said. “You don’t know shit. Is that right? Are you quite sure? Only, if this knife doesn’t scare you, I’d like you to think about how pissed off the gnomes that are surrounding you right now are. I bet there’d be more than a few of them that would jump at the chance of using your rectal cavity for cave excavation digging practice. All I have to do is ask for volunteers.”

The man swallowed. His beady eyes flitted from gnome face to gnome face. Then he broke like a pottery anvil.

“All right, look, we were just told that there might be a group of rebels heading toward the Castle of Ascendance from the sea, right?” he said. “We were instructed by the powers that be—don’t ask me for names because that ain’t how our operation works—to take these people out should they appear. It was nothing personal.”

“Oh, good,” I said. “I’m glad it was nothing personal. I would have hated to have been murdered thinking that it might have been personal.”

The necromancer blinked. “Really?”

“No, not really,” I said.

“Oh.”

“Why did your bosses, whoever they are, want you to try and kill us?” Odette said, stepping forward, her dragon tail whipping the air menacingly.

The man shrugged moodily. “Don’t know. They were just talking about some Universal magic dying and that you lot might want to stop it dying and that would be bad for business.”

“Bad for business?” I said exasperatedly. “It’s going to be bad for everyone’s business, you jackass.”

The man shrugged again and stared mulishly at the gathering of gnomes pressing in closer around us.

It was obvious that we were going to get no more information out of the gutless Death Mage. I was sure he would have spilled more beans if he had been in possession of them, but it looked like he had told us everything he knew. Clearly, he wasn’t a big fish of any kind—if the big fish were great whites, he would have been a cod, or a halibut, maybe.

“Typical fucking henchman,” I said, shaking my head sadly at the bound man kneeling before me. “Given just enough info to make you feel like a big swinging dick, like you’re part of some cool club, and to make you feel like risking your life to take us down is a good idea. Really though, you know next to nothing.”

I was just about to say that it’d be prudent to take the guy as a prisoner when, from out of the throng of thoroughly acerbic gnomes, one little lass wearing a patchwork skirt and a bikini top crafted from a couple of shells jumped up onto his chest, grabbed his collar, and skewered the necromancer neatly through the eyeball.

The man flopped over backward, blood spurting from his punctured eye and brain matter leaking through the hole in the back of his cranium.

“That’s what you get for turning my cousin into a zombie, you no good son of a baba yaga!” she shrieked, and spat on the twitching corpse.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said, holding up my arms to try and quell the sudden bloodlust that seemed to have diffused itself through the mess of gnomes. “Let’s not get overly boisterous and tear this fucking guy to pieces. It’ll make a hell of a mess, and we can’t afford to get covered in gore. Zombies aren’t all that bad, let me tell you.”

I looked down at the very dead Death Mage at my feet. As I watched, a gnome casually sidled closer and booted the man hard in the balls. I guessed he was just making sure that he wasn’t faking it, although with the Death Mage having a sharpened wooden stake stuck right through his eye and out of the back of his head, he would have to be one hell of an actor.

“What d’you mean zombies ain’t bad?” a gnome in the front row of the assembly piped up. “What the hell is good about ‘em, huh?”

“Well, I have a kind of pet one named Arun-dead,” I said. “Calling him a pet is a bit derogatory, I suppose, and he didn’t really used to be my friend…” I paused in my story.

“Basically, all you need to know,” I said, “is that there was this guy I used to know who suffered from a severe case of fuckfaceitis, right? Only, he turned out to be maybe not so much of a shitbag as we all thought. Anyway, he got turned into a zombie by these very same assholes that killed some of your friends and burned down some of your toadstool houses today. We kept him around, rather than slay him for good. The reason being, that one of my very close friends and colleagues hinted that there might be a way to turn him back into a mortal. Isn’t that right, Odette?”

Odette, who had been the one to hint such a thing might be possible, muttered something inaudible and looked up at the tree branches above her.

There was some muttering and intense conversation taking place around us amongst the gnomes. While the debate about whether the anecdote I’d just told them was a load of bullshit or not went on, I turned my attention to Alura.

“You look pretty calm,” I said.

“Do I?” Alura replied. There was a Delphic smile on her lips.

“You don’t think we’re in a bit of a pickle here?” I asked, with just a hint of irony. “You’re not at all worried in the slightest about what this hold up might mean for our plan?”

“Not to the extent that I think you believe I should be,” Alura said coolly.

“Well, now we’re stranded with no way into the Castle of Ascendance,” I said. “If we walk, we’re never going to get there in time.”

I watched the Gemstone Princess’ face. It was still lit by that small, knowing smile.

“Right?” I asked her, second guessing myself suddenly.

“We’re invited guests remember, Justin,” Princess Alura said. “You’re chaperoning three women who have been invited by the Queen herself—three women of royal and important blood! You’ve become so used to thinking with a clandestine mind that you’ve forgotten that we don’t have to sneak in.”

On went the lightbulb. Alura was right, of course.

“So what, we take the train into the castle or something?” I asked jokingly.

This time it was Alura’s turn to be surprised.

“How did you know?” she asked.

“Know? Know what?”

“That we could catch a train?” Alura said.

I looked from Alura to Acer, from Acer to Odette, and from Odette to the collection of gnomish fasces that surrounded us.

“You’re pulling my leg,” I said. “Aren’t you?”

“No,” Alura replied. She gestured around at the small, knobby, potato-like faces of the gathered gnomes. “These fine ladies and gentlemen will be able to aid us.”

“How?” I asked.

A bandy-legged gnome wearing lurid yellow pants and an orange headband that clashed with his bright ginger hair stepped forward, “Easy, chief,” he said to me in the gnomes’ endearing quasi south Texan drawl. “You’re going to ride as the guest of honor on our Gnomish Underground Network Train, or GUNT for short.”

The gathered gnomes cheered happily, a few of them sparking up what looked like massive celebratory spliffs to pass around.

I looked at Alura.

“Oh good,” I said drily. “You hear that? We get to ride their GUNT.”

Chapter 8

The Gnomish Underground Network Train was like the supernatural crossover of a Japanese bullet train and those minecarts in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Constructed of old planks and a few nails, it looked like it was going to fall apart just having us bigger folk—or whoppers as the gnomes called us—riding on it. The gnomish engineers had made a few adjustments, cutting out the backs of four whole carriages and furnishing us with pillows stuffed with dried leaves. They told us we could lie down on the pillows and ensure our heads weren’t taken off by the low tunnel roof.

Seeing as there was most certainly a magical element to the GUNT, I figured the ride wouldn’t match the underground train’s rustic outer appearance. In this assumption, I could not have been more wrong. It was about as comfortable as standing up on a motorcycle and riding it backward through a cornfield.

It was, however, fast.

We blasted through tunnels lined with lanterns glowing all the colors of the rainbow. Purple, pink, yellow, red, chartreuse—it wasn’t surprising given that the gnomes were basically professional ‘shroom farmers and were probably off their rockers ninety percent of the time.

“Hey!” I yelled to our driver over the clatter of the rickety wheels on the track. “Any chance that you have a station near the docks of the Castle of Ascendance?”

The train driver was a rangy gnome whose repellent facial features were actually improved by the scraggly beard and liberal coating of tunnel dirt. He grinned toothily at me. Even as the train rocketed along the tracks, he pulled a piece of dried mushroom from the pocket of his dirty green and brown striped overalls and stuffed it into the side of his mouth like chewing tobacco.

“Sure do, boss!” He twirled a spanner around one finger and grabbed his shapeless hat as we dropped down an incline. “We surely do! I can get you there in one-half less than no time!”

“So long as we get there in the same shape as we left, then that’s fine with me,” I yelled back.

“You ain’t got nothin’ to worry about, whopper!” the tiny maniac driving the train replied soothingly. “You don’t got to be nervous about dyin’ today—you got my personal guarantee on that!”

“I’m not too worried about death,” I muttered. “I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

We must have covered the ten miles that separated us from the Castle of Ascendance, plus an extra five winding around, in no more than twenty-five minutes. By the time we arrived at our stop, I was feeling almost as windswept as I had after going through that damn inter-dimensional whirlpool.

“Thanks, pal,” I muttered as the women and I extricated ourselves out of the train carts and crawled through the grimy little landing stage.

“Any time, whoppers,” the gnome train driver called cheerily, popping another dried mushroom into his mouth and spitting brown juice with gusto. He offered the girls and me a sliver of dehydrated fungus, but we turned him down.

“Better to steer clear of the hallucinogens before a job that could decide the fate of the universe,” I told him.

The gnome shrugged his bony shoulders. “If you say so, boss,” he said amiably, his tone making it obvious that he thought I was insane as far as that opinion went. He cranked a lever in front of him, and the GUNT started to take off slowly.

“You’re out of here?” I called, suddenly thinking that it might not be a bad plan having a backup escape route.

“Shit yeah, I’m out of here, whopper! Like spit through a trumpet! I’ve got a schedule to keep. See you at the diner at the edge of the universe!”

And with that, the little train was gone, leaving only the faint echo of the train driver’s laughter behind.

I looked around at the girls. We were all on our hands and knees, packed in tight on a platform that was little more than stamped dirt. There was a circle of daylight not far off to my left.

“Sometimes,” I said, snorting ruefully, “I think it’d be a lot simpler if I just gave up and went insane right now.”

Alura put a hand on my shoulder. “Come on. There’ll be enough time for that later. Let’s get this job done.”

We crawled through the gnome-sized station and pushed our way out of the entrance tunnel. When we were out and had brushed the dirt off us, I looked back and realized that the ‘station’ was either disguised as, or had been built out of, an old badger set.

“Talk about an interesting renovation,” Odette said, arching an eyebrow and smiling.

“Talk about a bunch of trippers,” I muttered. “But they got us here—there’s no denying that. Which way do you think the port is?”

“I know the way,” Alura said. “Follow me. Is your disguise in place, Justin?”

It hadn’t been, but I activated it now.

“I’m going to put it all the way up,” I said. “Just to ensure that there are no slip ups.”

I concentrated for just a second and felt the glamor fall into place around me.

“Gods,” Acer Blade said, “you’d think that the more you see that hideous excrescence of a body, the easier it would become.”

“But no?” I asked.

Acer shook her head.

“And that coming from a woman who quite literally just cut someone’s lungs out of their body,” I said woodenly. “Wow, this guy must be quite the looker.”

Alura set off purposefully toward the sounds of breaking water.

“We can stop and discuss the aesthetic qualities of your glamor later,” she said. “As for now, let’s get moving.”

“You’re right,” I said. “We need to find Gertrude and get into the Castle of Ascendance ASAP.”

With Alura as our guide, Odette, Acer, and I found ourselves walking down a road by the edge of the river. It was an extremely clement afternoon. The sun was dipping, the evening just starting to begin. Blue and pink striped bees hummed languidly in the hedgerows, although I couldn’t recognize the song.

“Look, gagana birds!” Acer Blade suddenly said, pointing out over the river.

Hovering over the glassy water were a couple of swan-sized birds. As we walked along and watched them, one of the birds dropped down and plucked a fish from the water.

“They’re revered by my people,” Acer told us, watching the birds with her unblinking metallic eyes. “They have copper claws and iron beaks, so they hold a special place in the hearts of all Metal Mages.” She gave a little sigh that wasn’t in keeping with her hardass character. “They taste fucking delicious too.”

That’s more like it, I thought.

We walked along the riverside, the foot traffic becoming busier and busier as we drew nearer to the Castle of Ascendance. This was all good with me. The busier it was, the more flustered and occupied the guards would be, and the easier it would be for four dignitaries like ourselves to sneak in.

As we moved through the crowds and turned right to walk up a beautifully crafted dock, I noticed a recurring theme to the conversation of the passersby, not to mention a note of worry that ran through the voices.

“…had to take my magic carpet into the shop today,” one dwarf was telling another as the pair sat on a crate and munched sandwiches. “Only bought the blasted thing a week ago. I went to get on it this morning, and what do you know? It’s completely buggered! Wouldn’t even start. I sent a homing pixie message to the dealership, but they swore the incantations on it should be good for up to ten-thousand nautical miles…”

“You’ll never believe what happened today,” another woman was saying to a bent-backed old dryad. “I was making goldhorn buns to take up to the castle for the Queen’s special gathering, and the pegasus flour that I’d brought special didn’t rise. It got halfway to the ceiling, and then suddenly flopped to the ground.”

“I felt so strange,” said another lanky dude we passed, who had branches growing out of his head and roots for fingers. “Kind of like, empty, you know?”

“…tried one spell after another, and there was nothing. Nothing! For a good thirty seconds! Then it all came back to me!”

“…couldn’t even open my spellbook when I tried to…”

“What the hell is going on?”

“…it’s why I trekked into the big city. I don’t usually like makin’ the journey, but someone needs to be told about…”

‘’There’s something funny going on…”

“Something just isn’t quite right…”

By the time we had reached the main thoroughfare that would lead us to the castle’s main gates, a conclusion was easy to draw. The glitching out of the Universal Magic was happening far and wide and to folk other than ourselves.

I was following respectfully behind the other three women, seeing as they were my alter-ego’s betters, when I saw someone waving to us.

Surreptitiously, I touched Alura on the shoulder.

“Gertrude, nine o’clock,” I said. “Act natural.”

Alura turned her head as if she had a crick in her neck, spotted Gertrude, and gave her an almost imperceptible nod. The old woman stopped her waving and settled back against the warm bit of wall that she had been occupying.

Her face was just as full of the soft lines as I remembered—lines made by time and many frowns and even more laughter. Once more, I imagined that she must have been quite the certified dime piece back in her heyday. Her bright ice-chip blue eyes glinted knowingly out from behind her gold wire glasses.

Once we were standing before her, I stepped forward and said in a voice that was almost inaudible over the noise of the crowd, “Gertrude, it’s a pleasure to see you again.”

“What was that?” the old woman asked. “Speak up, lad.”

“It’s good to see you again,” I said, this time a little louder.

Gertrude’s eyes twinkled even brighter.

“Ah,” I said, “you’re fucking with me.”

“I am fucking with you, yes, Mr. Mau—Mr. Thyme,” Gertrude said.

“Mr. Time?” I asked.

“Thyme, with a ‘h’ and ‘y’, dear,” Gertrude said.

I leaned forward in case someone overheard me and thought I was a crazy person.

“It’s me, Justin Mauler, you know that, right?” I asked.

Gertrude patted me on my fat cheek. “I know that, dear,” she agreed. “But this body that you have been cloaked in once belonged to one of the Queen's lesser known, more reviled functionaries. A late Mr. Thyme.”

“Okay,” I said, glancing at Alura, Odette, and Acer. “Okay, that’s good to know. Possibly something that I should have asked about before we actually left on the mission, but never mind.”

“Reginald didn’t tell you?” Gertrude asked me.

“No,” I said.

Gertrude shook her head. “That boy, he’s always been the same,” she said. “Always a maven for everything that is grand and world-changing, but so often forgets the little details that bring trouble down on peoples’ heads.”

“Yep, you’ve basically got the Reginald Chaosbane that I know in a nutshell there,” I agreed.

“Well, now you know, dear,” Gertrude said. “Handy that he also has your first name, isn’t it?”

I raised my eyebrows. “My name,” I said slowly, “is Justin Thyme?”

Behind me, I heard Acer snort with mirth.

“That’s right, dear,” Gertrude said.

“I sound like one of the more fruity Bond villains,” I said.

“I’m sure I don’t know who that is, Mr. Thyme,” Gertrude said.

Alura interrupted and suggested that we start making our way up to the castle. This idea was seized upon, and we moved off, with Gertrude leading the way.

When we had ascended the steps and walked up a path of white stones, we found ourselves confronted by a huge golden gate. Six guards arrayed in full mail stood in front of the gate. They were trying to deal with a horde of pedestrians all clamoring to get in to see the Queen or one of her representatives.

Gertrude slipped through the press with the supernatural ease of grannies everywhere. No matter how fierce the jostling, once someone felt the gentle pressure of Gertrude’s hand in the small of their back, they found themselves being inexorably moved aside under the combined weight of her old age, will, and their own insurmountable manners.

We followed after her like four obedient ducklings, Alura, Odette, Acer, and me coming last in the pecking order.

Within moments of entering the press of humanoids, we were standing in front of the gate, being blocked by a burly cyclops guard.

“Names and business?” The cyclops’ one eye scrunched into what looked like a permanent scowl.

Then, he caught sight of Gertrude.

“Madam Gertrude,” he said, his expression softening in the same way that a brick was capable of softening its expression. “I didn’t see you down here.”

“Hello, Besius dear,” Gertrude said sweetly. “Fancy letting me and my friends in, there’s a good lad.”

The cyclops, Besius, shifted his skimboard-sized feet. “I can let you in, no worries, Madame Gertrude,” he rumbled, “but your friends…”

I stepped forward. “This is Alura, the Gemstone Princess,” I said with as much contempt as I could muster into my new voice. “She, along with Acer Blade of the Cutter Clans and Odette Scaleblade of the Dragonkin, have been summoned here by none other than Queen Hagatha herself. Let us in.”

The guard bristled at being addressed like this by a man who looked like his father had been a sea slug, but somehow, he managed to refrain from punching my face through the back of my head.

It looked like the effort might have cost him a hernia though. He swallowed and said, “That’s all very well and good, sir, but who the fuck do you think you are?”

“Don’t tell me that you don’t know who I am,” I said.

“I admit that I don’t, sir,” the cyclops said, “and I admit it with a deal of gladness.”

“The name’s Thyme, Justin Thyme,” I said, trying my hardest not to show what I thought of this stupid name.

“Justin… Thyme…” the cyclops said. His eye narrowed. “Hang on a second—I heard you were dead.”

I looked frostily at him from out of my pouchy eyes. “I hear that a lot,” I said. “I fear that it is merely wishful thinking.”

The guard looked at me with as much enthusiasm as he might look at a large dog turd on the bottom of his boot after he had just realized that he’d walked it through his newly carpeted house.

Gertrude cleared her throat and offered up a tin that she had produced from somewhere.

“These are for you, Besius,” she said. “They’re the biscuits with the jellied dormouse chunks in them. Your favorite.”

Besius looked away from me and took the tin with a string of gracious words of thanks.

“It’s okay, dear, not a problem at all,” Gertrude said. “I just found the ingredients lying around my tower and thought, ‘who finds dormice particularly toothsome’? Not a problem at all, dear. Can we just pop on in, then?”

Besius nodded, still stammering his thanks, and opened the gate behind him.

As we passed through and the gate shut with a clang behind us, I whispered to the old Inscriber, “That was damn amazing work, Gertrude.”

“You’d be amazed at how few passwords and secret handshakes stand up to a good bit of home baking, lad,” she replied.

Once we had been let through the front gates, it was assumed that we had every right to be inside the Castle of Ascendance. There were still guards stationed everywhere, of course, but they were more of the ornamental, living security camera variety. Not the patrolling, stab-first-and-ask-questions-later type.

I was just calculating how and where Gertrude, Acer, Alura, Odette and myself might be able to sneak off to, when there was a sudden commotion in the grand entrance hall. People were dropping to their knees like they had all just been hit in the back of the legs by a horde of pranking poltergeists.

“Down,” hissed Acer, actually hitting me in the back of my leg so that I dropped heavily down along with everyone else.

“What the fuck is going on?” I grumbled.

But the fanfare of trumpets gave it away.

It was Queen Hagatha making her subtle entrance into the grand hall.

Chapter 9

Queen Hagatha was just as incredibly beautiful, poised, and regally glorious as I remembered her. Her bright red hair fell like twists and ropes of blood across her shoulders. It was kept back from her finely boned, perfectly proportioned face by a golden crown that looked to have been spun rather than forged. I had thought she was an elf of some kind, the last time that we had met, and I still thought this, but of what sub-class I could not say. She had the pointed ears poking out from the bright red tresses, almond eyes of piercing emerald, green, and the fine bone structure and tight-knitted muscle of an athlete too.

All in all, if she had been a phaser, she would have been set to stun.

After we had all exhibited our prowess at knee-dropping, the Queen said, “Please, stand,” and everyone got back to their feet.

Queen Hagatha moved through the room like smiling, weightless apparition. She exchanged words with almost everyone that she encountered and made sure to smile at any whom she didn’t speak to directly.

There was no way that any of us could slip away, not without being noticed and, in a situation like that, to leave would have been to show the greatest disrespect. If I knew anything about royals, it was that they had the kind of egos on them that you could dock a spacecraft to.

Queen Hagatha moved through the crowd toward us. When she reached us, she paused. Her eyes crinkled up happily when she caught sight of Gertrude, who everyone seemed to love. Then they moved onto the faces of Odette, Acer, and, lastly, Alura.

“Odette Scaleblade, Acer Blade, and Alura of the Gemstone Elementals,” she said, in a voice that was warm milk and honey being poured down the ear canals, “I believe that the Arcane Council, and I, sent for you, did we not?”

“You did, Your Majesty,” Acer said. The words came clumsily to her lips, and I felt a surge of affection for the Metal Mage, who clearly had as little truck for all the bullshit ass kissing as I did. “Sorry we’re a bit late. We had some transportation troubles.”

“Is that right? Well, better late than never, I suppose,” the Queen said. She flicked her gaze to Alura who was watching her through her inscrutable gold and white eyes. “And are you well, Alura? It’s been a little while since last we met. I did not think that you would be accompanying your father on this trip. He made no mention of it in his reply to me.”

“It was a last-minute call, Your Majesty,” Alura said. “My father likes to protect me, but he seemed to think that this gathering would be of such importance that he couldn’t rightly leave me behind. I think he thought it would be in my best interests, as a future ruler of our people, that I come.”

“Very wise,” the Queen said approvingly, and she lay a hand on Alura’s arm and smiled warmly. “And it is so gratifying to see you again.”

While this whole conversation had been taking place, my thoughts had mostly been occupied with how funny it was that whenever anyone met a monarch, they automatically adopted that strange, almost disjointed and reversed way of speaking. You know the sort of thing I mean. Instead of saying, “Nice to see you, buddy, it’s been too long,” people say, “It is gratifying to make your acquaintance, sir, it has been an age since last we met.”

Strange.

Anyway, such thoughts were eradicated when the stunningly sexy sovereign turned those big green eyes of hers on me.

“You sir,” she said, “I feel that we have met before.”

“I, uh, yes we have, Your Majesty,” I said haltingly. “Yes, I used to work for you some time ago.”

The Queen frowned slightly. I could tell what she was thinking. She was thinking: “How the fuck do I not remember a dude working for me who looks like something that got fished out of a storm drain after a bad flood?”

“It was in a minor role, Your Majesty,” Gertrude interjected. “Justin Thyme here was a junior functionary who took care of some of the more annoying tasks that fell to some of your ministers.”

The Queen’s face darkened just a smidge at the words “annoying tasks.”

“I think I do recall the, ah, the name,” she said, clearly meaning that she recalled Thyme’s face. I didn’t blame her. Didn’t take it personally. It wasn’t my visage after all. Wasn’t really me who would have been in constant danger of being fined for mooning every time I stuck my head out of a window.

Queen Hagatha tapped her lip thoughtfully.

“Is it my imagination or did someone say that you had retired?” she asked in a pensive voice.

Rats.

“Um, yes, that’s true, Your Majesty,” I said.

“Yes, I thought so. I distinctly remember hearing about it from one of my aids. He had been very excited about it. Indecently so, I thought.”

“Uh, yes, Your Majesty,” I said.

“If I remember rightly, he told me that there had been a function or party of some kind planned to celebrate your retirement.”

“Actually, that was a party to celebrate Mr. Thyme’s leaving, Your Majesty,” Gertrude said in her sweet little voice. “There is an ever so subtle difference.”

“And what’s that?” the Queen said.

“Normally the person retiring is invited to a retirement party, whereas a leaving party is more to celebrate the person actually…”

“Ah,” the Queen said.

“Quite,” Gertrude said.

“Mr. Thyme,” Queen Hagatha said, skating past what would have undoubtedly been an awkward little pause in the conversation had we actually been talking about my celebrated lack of popularity.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” I said, my chins wobbling merrily as I talked.

“I need you to do something for me.”

I cursed inwardly. This was not the time for running errands, but there was nothing I could really do. As cool and casual as the Queen was being now, I was almost certain that if I told her I was busy and couldn’t do her a favor, I’d be out of the castle in five seconds flat.

“Anything, Your Majesty,” I said.

“You may have noticed when you came in, but I am receiving a lot of visitors today,” Queen Hagatha said.

That was a bit of an understatement, but I nodded my head agreeably.

“They all want to see me, to talk to me about certain problems that are taking place in Avalonia and beyond,” Queen Hagatha continued. “This is very… taxing. Not to mention that it takes up much of my time—time that I do not really have to spare.”

“Yes, my queen,” I said, wishing that the red-headed beauty would get to the point.

“As you sound as if you have experience dealing with less consequential and seminal tasks, I would deem it a great favor if you would attend to the Lower Drongo Courtroom and hear a couple of the cases that are awaiting my judgement. Usually, in less vital times, I would preside over these cases, as any monarch should. If I was unable to do it, for whatever reason, one of my senior representatives from the Arcane Council might take my place. As today of all days, I have called what is perhaps the most grave and weighty assembly that these halls have ever seen, I find myself short of people suited to this particular task. Would you mind awfully?”

What could I say?

“Of course, Your Majesty.”

I only hoped that these couple of cases could be dealt with swiftly and then I might be able to excuse myself and wander around the castle unimpeded. Actually, the more I thought about it, this just might work to our advantage, so long as there weren’t too many disputes and grievances waiting to be settled.

“Splendid,” the Queen said graciously. “Gertrude will accompany you to the Lower Drongo Courtroom, as she is not part of my council.”

Queen Hagatha then turned to face Alura, Acer, and Odette, who had been waiting politely for her to finish.

“Ladies,” she said, “shall we be off?”

And, without a backward glance, the Queen of Avalonia swept away, moving like she was gliding on invisible rails. Alura, Acer, and Odette gave me fleeting looks and then followed after the Queen.

Not having anything else that we could do, Gertrude and I made our way through a series of corridors and down flights of stairs until we came outside a dingy-looking double door. Over the archway the words, LOWER DRONGO COURTYARD were emblazoned in shimmering golden magic letters.

“Hey,” I said to Gertrude, “is the fact that I have no fucking idea how to preside over anything more formal than a frat party going to be a problem here?”

Gertrude shook her head.

“Anyone who even remembers Justin Thyme, and there will be a minimal few who just might, will remember him as being a bigoted idiot who was more interested in the sound of his own voice than listening to other people talk. He was a low-level bully and an old moron. Trust me, you not knowing what you’re doing is probably going to be an improvement on what that man would have been like had he still been alive.”

“Great,” I said. “I think.”

“This leads me to the only point of advice that I can give you,” Gertrude said hurriedly as the sound of tramping boots came echoing toward us, getting closer.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Do not be yourself,” the old woman said. “You're a good man, Justin Mauler. Justin Thyme was not. It might grate on you, but you’re going to have to channel your inner asshole if you don’t want to give the game away in that courtroom. Understand?”

I nodded and set my face in a sour mask of derisive contempt, just as a couple of guards walked around the corner.

“Madame Gertrude,” one of them said—I wasn’t even surprised anymore that they knew who she was.

“Boys,” Gertrude said, walking the line between flirty old broad and charming grandmotherly figure.

“You’re here for the cases?” the guard asked.

“I’m here to watch,” Gertrude said. “Mr. Thyme here will be officiating at the behest of Her Majesty.”

The guard nodded. “We’ve been told. This way, Mr. Thyme.”

Gertrude slipped through the main doors of the courtroom, while I was taken through a stone corridor and led to another, less conspicuous door.

“You have to wear this, sir,” the guard said, and he handed me the most garish gold robe that I had ever seen. It was sparkly and gaudy enough to be Elton John’s jockstrap.

“I wasn’t aware that it was fancy-dress,” I said acidly.

“But those are the robes of judgement, sir,” the other guard said.

Shit, Thyme would probably have known that, I thought.

I snatched the robes from the guard’s unresisting two-fingered, blue hand.

“It was merely my attempt at humor,” I snapped. “Gods, I’m about to go into the lion’s den of morons and you won’t allow me one last joke. Bah!”

I pulled the robes over my head, feeling like something that Aladdin might have stolen from the Cave of Wonder, pulled the door open, and stumped out into the Lower Drongo Courtroom.

It immediately struck me that the Queen had understated things somewhat when she had said there were only a couple of cases.

The place was heaving. When I entered, the general chatter rose so that soon the high stone ceilings were ringing with the cries of aggrieved peasantry.

“…wandered into my house and cut it right off and there weren’t nothin’ I could do because me magic left me!”

“…employ a harpy to keep an eye on my goats. Poor bugger fell right out of the sky for no reason. You know how much the insurance company is trying to sting me in excess for that?”

“…chat this gorgeous babe up and her glamor fades just as she reaches for my unmentionables, and it’s none other than my mates, Tony and…”

“Order!” I said loudly, and was ignored as thoroughly as if I’d said nothing at all.

I tried again, louder this time. “Quiet in the court!”

Nothing.

“Shut the fuck up!” I roared and fired a small Blazing Bolt at the ceiling.

The spell hit the stone roof and detonated, causing stone dust to rain down on the assembled mob below.

The crowd shut up as one.

I glowered around at the mess of people waiting for the Queen’s justice. There seemed to be very little order to the courtroom. The plaintiffs were all milling around in a kind of legal mosh pit below where I sat, six feet above the main floor. Around the walls, sitting on benches and a few comfier leather chairs, were witnesses—or spectators, I thought more likely—and scribes. A few among the crowd had brought packed lunches with them.

“Good grief!” I snorted testily. “What a damned rabble! Let’s get things moving—I haven’t got all day.”

This last statement was true enough. I needed to get through this ASAP so that I could see about freeing the captive Creation Mages.

“First case!” bellowed a herald at one side of the room, reading off a depressingly lengthy bit of parchment. “Etazz versus Weird Thaumaturgical Fluctuation.”

“Begin!” I bellowed.

I was getting into character a bit more now. I had decided that if Thyme had been as much of a bastard as everyone seemed to think, then he would definitely be a volume over words man.

A witch, Etazz, elbowed her way to the front of the throng. She was green-skinned and warty in a predictable kind of way.

“What’s the problem, woman?” I said curtly.

“It’s like this, sir,” Etazz began. “I was skinning a cat the other day—”

“You were what?” I asked.

“Skinning a cat, sir.”

“Why were you doing that?” I knitted my bushy eyebrows in what I hoped was a disapproving way, although I was genuinely intrigued.

“Well, I’m a witch mostly, but I’m a bit of a philosopher in my spare time, sir.”

“Right,” I said.

“And everyone always says that there’s more than one way to skin a cat, don’t they, sir?”

“It’s an expression that I am familiar with, yes,” I growled.

“Well, I was thinking one day, how many ways are there to skin a cat? Has anyone ever counted?” Etazz said. “And I’d never heard no one specify, sir, so I thought I’d make history and count how many—”

“Very good, very good, public knowledge in mind, very good!” I blathered loudly. “Carry on. You were skinning a cat and…?”

“And I was just skinning the nose, sir—a devilishly hard part, sir—when I felt this strange tingle in the air, sir. A sort of ripple if you catch my drift?”

“Yes? And then?” I prompted unnecessarily.

“And then, as the ripple sort of ripples over me, sir, the cat lets out a scream that would have woken my grandmother had she not been dead these past twenty years, gets up, slashes me a across the face with its claws, and runs off.”

Etazz pointed at four scratch marks on her warty face.

I considered this.

“Right, and what do you want me to do about it?” I asked.

Etazz shrugged. “Well, something. Dead cats can’t just go around becoming undead. Not without the proper spells and mystical rituals at least. Where does it stop if that sort of thing is allowed to happen?”

“Quite true, good point, woman,” I said, in what I hoped was an annoyingly condescending way. “Wouldn’t want to be sitting down to a nice plate of bacon only to have the pig storming in demanding its nipples, eh?”

The witch looked at me like I was crazy.

“The verdict is that you shall be escorted from here,” I said, making things up as I went, “by a guard and that guard shall go to your house and make sure that the instruments that you used to kill the cat are sharp. You must not have killed it properly.”

“I used a club,” Etazz retorted.

“Then the guard shall make sure that it is blunt,” I said. “And that it is of the regulation weight for cat-killing, which is, I believe, eleven and a half pounds. Dismissed!”

The witch was led away, grumbling unhappily.

In the privacy of my own mind, I was wondering whether there would be a lot of this.

“Next!” I roared.

“Uh, this would seem to be a double-case, sir,” the herald said.

“What do you mean a double-case?” I huffed.

“We have here…” and the herald quickly scanned his notes to make sure that what he was reading made sense. “We have here Mr. Boni versus Mrs. Boni and, depending on the outcome of this first trial, we might then have the trial of Mrs. Boni versus the Weird Thaumaturgical Fluctuation—from here on known as WTF.”

I slapped my forehead with the palm of my hand in amazement at how insane people could be. There was no acting involved.

“Very well,” I said. “Let’s proceed. Mr. Boni, what is your grievance against your wife?”

“Alleged, sir,” said the unshaved, pig nosed Mr. Boni.

That threw me for a second.

“Do you mean, you dimwit,” I snapped, “that the grievance is alleged, or that Mrs. Boni is your alleged wife?”

Mr. Boni looked confused. I didn’t blame him.

“The second one?” he hazarded.

“You’re saying that she’s not actually your wife?” I asked exasperatedly.

“Am I?” Mr. Boni said.

I slammed my pudgy fist on the tabletop in front of me.

“Just forget the damned alleged part of this farce and get to the point, Mr. Boni!” I roared.

Mr. Boni stood up straighter, and his Adam’s apple bobbed nervously.

“Basically, sir,” he gabbled, “I was under the influence of this, um, incantation that cured me of my - of my - of my what-do-you-call-it…” He snapped his fingers a few times. “My stifficulty, sir, if you get my meaning.”

“Your stifficulty?” I asked. “What are you talking ab—Oh…”

“Right, sir,” Mr. Boni said, over the gales of laughter and whistling from the benches. “Anyways, my wife put this spell on me, sir, so that I could crack a fatty like it was made out of timber, sir.”

I waved my hands and made a pained face. “Yes, yes, and what is the problem?”

“Well, when this weird rippling magic thing happened, like what that witch talked about before, sir, the incantation broke. My erectile disjunk… My erectile disjoint… My chublessness returned, sir.”

“And you are bringing a case against your wife, why?” I asked. “Shouldn’t you be taking umbrage against the WTF, as it is now known?”

“No, sir,” Mr. Boni said. “You see the thing is, my wife wants to put the incantation back on me, sir.”

I frowned. “And you don’t want her to?”

“No, I don't, sir,” Mr. Boni said vehemently, his face that of a man who has tightrope-walked over the mouth of hell and doesn’t want to repeat the experience.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because then I’ll have to fuck her, sir!” Mr. Boni said.

“You’ve lost me,” I said, shaking my head.

“Have you seen my wife, sir?” Mr. Boni said.

I looked over at a woman standing off to one side. She looked like an ass-faced weasel, with teeth so crooked she could eat a cob of corn through a chainlink fence.

“Good point!” I said.

I beckoned the woman forward.

“And why is it that you are so intent on cursing your husband with a working penis?” I asked her.

“Well, he ain’t got anything else for him apart from being hung like a racehorse,” she said moodily. “And old Mrs. Boni’s got a hungry pussy.”

I tried to repress a shudder and failed absolutely.

“Well, in this case, I must side completely and one-hundred percent with Mr. Boni,” I said.

“In that case, I want a judgement on me versus the damn WTF!” Mrs. Boni screeched. “I want to know what kind of random ass act of bullshit has robbed me of my favorite plaything; my no-good husband’s succulent, colon-cracking, pussy-pounding, pork truncheon!”

Somehow, I managed not to throw up, but it was a close thing.

The courtroom had erupted into mirth-fueled bedlam at Mrs. Boni’s graphic description, and it would have taken quite some doing to get it under control again. Luckily, I was saved from trying by a tap on the shoulder.

“Excuse me, sir,” came a quiet but steely voice from behind me. It was one of the guards.

“What? What is it?” I snapped.

“There’s a gentleman back here who wishes to see you, sir.”

“Now?”

“Right now, sir.”

I looked over to where Gertrude was sitting off to one side of the courtroom. I had a stirring in my stomach that whoever this mysterious dude was, and whatever he wanted, it probably boded ill for us—me especially.

I might have been a little more freaked out, if I hadn’t become so used to my stomach squirming in a vaguely uneasy way.

“Fine,” I said peevishly, making a real meal of hauling my big, sluggardly ass to my feet. With my drooping physique, hefty gut, and manboobs that would have made Meatloaf count himself lucky, all wrapped up in my gold foil robe, I must have looked like nothing less than a giant bell.

Surveying the guard’s face caused me to feel another pang of unease. The man’s face had lost that phony look of deference that it had worn when he and his colleague had escorted me into the courtroom. On his countenance now was a simple look of open revulsion and contempt, which was probably par for the course for anyone looking at Justin Thyme. What made me take particular notice though, was that his hand was resting not-so-casually on the hilt of his shortsword.

He stepped aside as I barged ungraciously past him and entered the corridor that backed my little judge’s booth.

There were two more guards waiting in the corridor.

“What is this?” I asked. “What the hell have you chuckleheads pulled me out of an open session of court for, eh? I am officiating in the Lower Drongo Court at the behest of Queen Hagatha herself, you know. I’m reasonably sure that even you complete dingleberries are probably aware of who she is, yes?”

I quivered like a particularly offended blob of jello. It wasn’t hard. It was practically Thyme’s state of being.

The guards said nothing, and it was only then that I became aware of the very subtle taint of menace that was permeating the corridor, diffusing through the close atmosphere like tea through a mug of hot water.

A door behind me opened. A gust of air that was laced with peppermint and commination blew out of the room beyond. If Hell has a dentist’s waiting room, then that is what it would have smelled like.

The room was your bog-standard, no-frills rectangular affair, lit with a couple of magical globes that bobbed up near the ceiling like very well-trained illuminated balloons. There was a coat stand in one corner, another chair in front of the desk, and a small window set into the wall, through which the dusky evening light was just managing to penetrate past the stone ledges outside. However, it was not the interior decor that grabbed at my attention like a drowning man at a rope.

A man sat behind a simple wooden desk. The desk might have been regular sized, but it looked like a toy made of matchsticks when compared to the figure sitting casually on the other side of it. He was big. Certainly, he was big. Yet, it wasn’t just his physical size that seemed to dwarf and shrink the things around him.

It was his presence.

An aura of jeopardy, apprehension, and dread emanated off him like waves of heat coming off a furnace.

He wore it like a cloak.

In fact, I wondered if the physical cloak that he wore was crafted from material or if it was the vibration of his dark soul made tangible. It was hard to say. The great, black mantle covered him completely, except for his head and hands, and shifted this way and that like shadows made solid. It was an outfit that he must have brought from the same tailor that Palpatine visited.

The skin of his bald head and his bare hands was a nauseating shade of pearlescent yellow. His eyes, when they looked up at me, were black and hungry as the inside of a wolf’s belly.

“Ah, just in time,” he said in an incongruously polite voice.

“That’s me,” I said as I was ushered inexorably through the doorway by the grim-faced guards.

The ominous figure folded his large hands contentedly in his lap and leaned back in his chair, quite at ease.

“No,” he said, “it is not.”

Chapter 10

I had to hand it to the hulking bean pole man with the cadmium yellow skin and black eyes: he certainly had style. He was good at playing the villain too.

After we had determined that I wasn’t who I appeared to be, the lanky yellow guy simply appraised me for a while. His black eyes weren’t angry or shocked or surprised or dismayed. In fact, there was a twinkle of amusement in the very depths of his eyes. But it vanished quickly.

My palm itched with the need to conjure my staff and blow the room and the man into little dime-sized pieces, but I had an inkling that this was exactly what this sable cloaked villain was waiting for me to do.

After we had stared at one another for a long moment, the man raised a single yellow finger. I tensed internally, readying myself to spring into action should it be required. However, the man did not say another word. Instead, a subtle cough behind me snagged my attention and made me realize that the two guards who had ushered me into the room were now standing at my back.

The cold black eyes slid away from my face like twin globs of oil.

“Mr. Thyme here is now our guest,” the yellow man said. His mouth stretched in something approximating a smile, although it was filled with about as much humor and goodwill as the grin you’d see on a tiger shark as it rose out of the depths to say hi to a passing surfer.

“A guest?” I said, dropping the manner of the man whose glamor I was wearing and adopting my usual tone of voice. “That sounds pretty civil. I’m guessing that this is the kind of guest that doesn’t get to choose whether they stay or go, though?”

“Come now, Mr. Thyme,” the looming shadow said, sitting easily back in the chair that looked just too damn small for him, “why would we let you go when we haven’t yet scratched the surface as to why you have implemented such a splendidly subtle glamor to gain access to the Castle of Ascendance?”

The mysterious stranger tapped the side of his bald head. “My mind is a steel trap for faces, Mr. Thyme. For dates and times. For histories. For secrets. For names. For everything. This means that I know for a fact that the real Justin T. Thyme retired on the third Friday of June three years ago. I am also cognizant of the fact that he was reported, in the Enchanter’s Weekly, as having died fifty-six days ago.”

I considered this. This guy was either an expert bluffer or really had these facts to hand. Whichever way you sliced it, he certainly had me over a barrel.

“You seem to know a lot about me,” I said, keeping my voice polite. “But I don’t even have a name for you.”

“Hmm, true, quite true,” the yellow bean pole man said calmly. “How very rude of me. I thought that, perhaps, you might have recognized my face. I’m told that those who have met me once seldom forget me.”

“I don’t doubt it,” I said.

The man gave me another soulless grin.

“You may call me Mr. Luctus,” he said.

“Well, Luctus,” I said, “I’d love to say that it was a blast meeting you, but a man never lies directly to someone’s face.”

Luctus drummed his long fingers on the desk. “Excellent advice,” he said. “In which case, I will tell you this: I will allow you one day to decide whether or not you wish to drop this intricate and powerful cloak that you are wrapped in now. After that time has elapsed—”

I pointed my finger at Luctus’ face and waggled it knowingly. “Oh, I’ve got a feeling that someone’s about to drop a bit of a villainous threat into the conversation…”

A deep purple tongue, the color of a fresh heart, darted out between Luctus’ lips and ran around his mouth. It reminded me of how Scooby-Doo used to clean his face in the cartoons. Only Scooby-Doo never looked like the devil incarnate when he did it.

“These excellent examples of Avalonian soldiery will escort you to our finest guest accommodation,” Luctus said when his tongue had slipped back between his pale, yellow lips. “You’ll have one day to remove the glamor—otherwise, I will have to take matters into my own hands. You can insert whatever cliched villainous threat you care to in there, Mr. Thyme.”

“Thanks,” I said.

Luctus made a gesture with his hand, and I felt the two guards step in close behind me.

“Aren’t you worried that I might get lonely in my cell?” I asked. “I’m quite a sociable guy. I don’t want to start getting cabin fever.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t fret about that, Mr. Thyme,” Luctus said, his cold black eyes reflecting the light of the globes bobbing around the ceiling, “your accommodations will be comfortable, and there is already someone waiting there for you.”

This bit of information surprised me, but before I could ask the obvious question, the guards had taken me by my arms and steered me from the room. The last glimpse that I got of Luctus was of the tall humanoid flowing lithely to his feet, his bald head almost scraping the ceiling as he leaned over his desk and watched me go.

My guards marched me through a maze of corridors, up and down about ten flights of stairs, through a courtyard under a glass domed ceiling, and then through a series of five locked doors, before stopping outside of a double door guarded by a pair of soldiers armed with crossed halberds.

On the way, I had toyed with the idea of overpowering my escorts and making a break for it, but I decided against it. Luctus was obviously a bonafide snake in the grass, and one that the soldiers of the Castle of Ascendance plainly feared. If he was comfortable enough to not even bother taking my vector off me, I had to think that he had an ace up his sleeve somehow—an ace that he could use to bring me to heel. There was no point in risking our mission, not until I had a little more knowledge about what was going on.

“This is the other one of Mr. Luctus’ guests,” said one of the soldiers who had been escorting me when we were standing in front of two men with crossed halberds.

Even at the mention of Luctus’ name, the two men guarding the door seemed to stand up a little straighter. Then, they uncrossed their halberds. One guard began sketching a pattern on a small block of stone set on a plinth beside the door, which I assumed was the wizarding version of a combination lock.

Trying to wedge a crowbar into any crack in morale or obedience that there might be amongst the soldiers, I said, “That man back there, that Luctus bastard—why is it that you sensible fellows actually follow him? Apart from out of a morbid curiosity as to what he’s going to do next, of course? He is clearly a bad guy, isn’t he?”

None of the guards said a word back to me, though one of the men behind me nudged me in the back.

After a few moments, the guard finished tracing whatever pattern unlocked the door and stood back from the mechanism. Without so much as a glimmer of emotion, he turned, lowered his halberd so that the sharp end was pointing at my chest, and motioned for me to go through the door.

I looked around at the four men. They appeared scared, but not of me. It was almost as if they knew that, if I escaped, they would have to face the sort of punishment at the hands of Luctus that would involve them being collected up in a bucket and thrown out the back door to the dogs.

I could have taken them there and then, but then what would I do? I didn’t know where in the Queen’s stronghold I was, or what was going on with my friends.

With a small sigh of annoyance, I pushed open the door and stepped inside.

As soon as I was through the portal, the door was shut hastily behind me. It made a very solid, very inescapable booming noise. This was followed by a series of heavy sliding clunks as bolts slid into position all the way up the door. Then, as a final cherry on top of the security cake, a nexus of bright red little bubbles emerged from out of the door. They looked almost like bubble wrap, though they hummed very faintly. I reached into my pocket, removed a bit of lint, and threw it at the door. It shriveled up into ash as soon as it touched the red nexus and fell as dust to the floor.

“There’s no getting out that way,” came a voice from behind me.

I turned and saw that Acer Blade was reclining on a wide, comfortable-looking sofa in the middle of a large and comfortable-looking lounge room.

“Acer,” I said, “fancy seeing you here.”

“I wish I could say that the pleasure is all mine,” Acer said, staring up at the ceiling with her all-silver eyes half closed, “but I see that you’re still inhabiting the body of that walking pus boil.”

I snorted with amusement. “Justin Thyme hasn’t grown on you yet, then?”

“No,” Acer said with a brutal and direct honesty that I was beginning to find quite appealing. “There are very few things that anyone would want growing on them—fungus for instance.”

I grimaced, unable to stop my imagination coming up with an assortment of funguses that might be tempted to grow on the body of Justin Thyme.

“Thanks for that mental picture,” I said drily, stepping further into the room.

“You’re very welcome, I’m sure,” Acer said, still not looking at me. “Please, come in and avail yourself of the delights of the most comfortable prison cell that I’ve yet been in.”

Of all the women that I had been lucky enough to meet and spend time with since entering the Avalonian Kingdom, each and every one of them brought unique skills and a unique temperament to the party. Every single one could look after themselves, were hellcats in battle and wouldn’t ever give up. However, as tough a bunch as they all were, I doubted there was a one among them who would have been able to match Acer Blades for raw, animal bloodthirsty aggression. She was a killer, pure and simple; a woman made to end the lives of those she considered enemies and to do it with a smile on her face and a song in her heart.

There was something super hot about that.

The room was spartan, but luxuriously so. It was as if a Scandinavian furniture designer had been asked to design a prison cell for the very rich. The furniture was all made of a pale wood that I didn’t recognize, low and inviting. The walls and floor were painted in white, but the ceiling was enchanted with soft golden paint that flowed like clouds or the sea, depending on how you looked at it.

There were a couple of doors leading off the main room, which I eyed.

“Bedrooms, bathroom, and a small kitchenette type thing,” Acer informed me lazily, noticing where I was looking. She had kicked her boots off and had her legs crossed. One foot was resting on her knee and was jiggling up and down to a tune she must have had going in her head.

“As a cell goes,” I said, “it is pretty nice. At least that gives us one piece of knowledge about that creepy bastard, Luctus.”

“And what’s that?” Acer asked.

“That he’s a man of his word.”

Surprisingly, there were a couple of windows set into the walls at the backs of the lounge area. I walked over to the windows. As I approached them, the same nexus of red bubbles that covered the door materialized in front of me.

“Yeah, there’s no way to bust out through that,” Acer said. “That security magic is integral to the building itself. A building as powerfully imbued with mana as the Castle of Ascendance isn’t the kind of place where you just blast a hole in the wall and stroll on out.”

I wandered around the suite of cell rooms, as there was nothing much else to do. The place was just as Acer had described; a bedroom with two beds, a bathroom with an opulent multi-headed shower, and a kitchenette. I looked through the cupboards of the kitchenette but found that there wasn’t anything in the way of food. This was a shame because after having to listen to all that bullshit in the courtroom, not to mention the fight in the gnome village, I was feeling like a snack might restore my equilibrium. There was, however, a dirty plate in the sink.

“There’s nothing to eat,” I called out to Acer, who had remained where she was on the sofa.

“Nope,” she said.

“Then where did that dirty dish come from? Or is it just to give the place that homely touch?”

“There should be a bit of parchment stuck to the wall by a little cupboard,” Acer said to me. “There’s a list of foodstuffs on there. You open the cupboard, tell the fairy on duty what you want, and then they summon it out of the kitchens.”

I blinked. Once again, I found myself being astonished by this magical world, just when I thought I’d passed the point of all surprise.

I scanned the list of dishes and then, not without a slight apprehension that Acer might have been pulling my leg, opened the door to the little cupboard.

There was a fairy inside. He was a pretty simple-looking three-inch tall dude with an amiable little face and big, guileless eyes. When the door opened, he sprang up from a small deck chair and saluted.

“Yes, sir?” he said in a voice that was so high and squeaky it must only just have registered on the scale of human hearing. To his credit, he only looked momentarily revolted by the sudden appearance of Justin Thyme.

“Uh, hi,” I said. “No chance of you getting me one of these burgers here is there?”

“The bunny burger with the dragonturtle relish, sir?” the fairy replied.

“That’s the one,” I said.

“And the fries that are tripled cooked in caladrius fat?”

“Uh, sure.”

“Very good, sir,” the fairy said cheerfully.

“Oh, wait!” I said suddenly, scanning the menu once more.

“Sir?” the fairy asked.

“Can you tell whoever is whipping it up to hold the pineapple, please? There’s no place for pineapple on a burger, just like pizza.”

“Very good, sir,” the fairy said.

He vanished in a puff of blue steam.

I looked around the kitchen and swung my arms a little, not entirely sure what to do next.

“How long does this thing—” I started to say, when there was another puff of blue smoke, and the fairy appeared on the table accompanied by one of those silver covered dishes. The little guy rose into the air in a flash of green wings and hauled the cover off the dish to reveal a sumptuous looking burger underneath.

“There you are, sir,” the tiny figure puffed. “Your bunny burger minus the pineapple.”

“Thanks very much,” I said.

The happy little fairy bowed. In another puff of blue smoke, the creature vanished, silver cover and all. There was a small snap as the door to his little cupboard closed and then the sound of what might have been a tiny television or radio set being turned on.

I ate the burger and fries and walked back into the lounge to find Acer lying just as she had been, staring up at the swirling golden paint that was ebbing and flowing like a tide across the ceiling.

“Better?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m feeling a bit more human, now that you mention it.”

“Is that all?” Acer asked.

“Is what all?”

“You said you were feeling more human,” the Blade sister said.

“That’s right.”

“But there’s so much more to feel than just that.”

I flopped down in an armchair and tried to make myself comfortable.

“Why don’t you change back to your normal form?” Acer asked me.

“You think it’s safe?”

Acer shrugged. She had unzipped her motorcycle style leathers at the neck so that she was more comfortable. My gaze lingered on the caramel-colored skin of her collar bones that were now visible. Speculatively, as guy’s minds often do when given three or more seconds down time, I began wondering what things looked like under her Matrix-esque outfit.

“They could have eyes in here,” I said.

“Sure they could,” Acer said, “but with the magic thrumming through these walls, I don't think it likely. Too much thaumaturgical mana interference for scrying devices, I think.”

“Fair point,” I said.

“You’ll hear anyone coming through that door long before it opens,” Acer said. “It makes a hell of a noise as those anti-mage locks are disabled.”

That was good enough for me. With a mental shrug, I vanished the level two glamor that I had been holding in place. Letting it go really was a weight off my mind.

“That’s better,” I said.

Acer sat up a little and looked at me.

“You’re damn right it’s better,” she said. “Now I can actually fucking look at you without wanting to scoop my own eyeballs out with a spoon.”

I laughed and settled back in my chair. I cursed and sat forward when I realized that relaxing in this chair was going to be about as possible as relaxing on the back of a moving orca whale.

“Come here,” Acer said, and she lifted her legs. “If you don’t mind me using you as a footstool. The sofa isn’t so bad.”

Surprised, but not all disappointed, I got up and relocated to the sofa. I lowered myself down and Acer dropped her legs on top of my lap.

“How’d you end up here?” I asked. “Did Luctus get you?”

“Not personally—some of his most polite and fucking deferential soldiers told me that there was an urgent message waiting for me,” Acer said. “I smelled a rat straight away, of course, but there was nothing I could do without bringing the wrath of the entire castle down on my head. I had to just roll with it. I figured that I could take out any guards if I really needed to escape, but I wasn’t going to compromise the mission until I knew what was going on.”

“Great minds think alike,” I muttered.

Acer flashed me a quick smile.

“Yeah, maybe,” she said. “But great minds also ended up locked in here together, huh?”

“That is a good and disappointing point,” I said. “So, did you get to meet Luctus?”

“Yeah, I was brought before the great hulking a-hole,” Acer said.

“Had you seen him before?” I asked.

Acer frowned and shook her head. “No,” she admitted. “No, I never laid eyes on that fucker in my life. That surprised me too, because he commands the sort of respect and fear from the men around him that makes me think that he’s been in the castle for years.”

I nodded my head in agreement. “That’s exactly what I thought. I wonder what the hell his deal is?”

Acer put her hands behind her head and stretched her legs. I was very, very aware of the steel hardness of the muscles in the backs of her thighs where they were lying on top of me, and the flatness of her stomach in her figure-hugging outfit.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “But I would be willing to wager that there’s nothing fucking good about him being here—probably nothing fucking good about him at all, as far as we’re concerned.”

“I’m inclined to agree with you,” I said. “What about Alura and Odette?”

“They were with me, but they weren’t caught. Which means this Luctus doesn’t think they’re guilty of anything.” Acer paused. “Did you know how buddy-buddy Alura and the Queen were?”

I shook my head. “I guess it never really came up, but it shouldn’t be that surprising now that I think about it. She occupies a pretty high position—it makes sense that they had come across one another over the years.”

Acer said nothing, but her face was creased in thought.

There was no sound that permeated from outside the room, not through the doors and not through the windows. There was a dull buzzing, which I realized was the sound of the nexus shields that covered the door and windows.

I was lost in my thoughts when I became aware of a very low-key shifting of Acer’s legs in my lap. At first, I thought that it was just her moving her legs to get comfortable, but then the movement became a little too regular to be explained by that. I looked over at the face of the Metal Mage and thought, at first glance, that she had her eyes closed. Then, I saw that there was a glimmer of silver just visible under her lowered eyelids.

“Don’t look so fucking shocked, Earthling,” she said when she noticed me peering at her.

“Shocked?” I asked.

“I assume you’re looking to see if I’m awake because you’ve noticed the motion of the ocean?” the silver-haired woman said to me with a meaningful grin. She started moving her legs a little more forcefully. She pressed her calves into my crotch, leaving me in no doubt as to what she was trying to do.

“I had noticed that there was a little something going on in my lap, yes,” I said. “I wouldn’t describe myself as being shocked, but I am surprised that you seem to be—as we say back on Earth—running game on me.”

Acer raised an eyebrow. “Why would what I’m doing come as a surprise to you?  Doesn’t the threat of potential looming death make you so… sooo…”

“Distracted? Focused?” I guessed.

“Horny,” Acer Blade said.

I snorted softly. “Honestly, I don’t think I had ever thought about my possible encroaching demise in those sorts of terms.”

Acer lifted her bare foot and pressed it with gentle but insistent pressure into my groin. My cock, tucked down my left pants leg, hardened at this rough treatment.

“You might not have thought about it consciously,” Acer said, “but it feels like part of you agrees with what I’m saying.”

“And what are you saying precisely?” I asked, giving the Metal Mage a knowing half smile.

“That there’s no bigger aphrodisiac than facing death,” Acer said. “That Luctus fucker might send for our heads tomorrow, and we might have to fight and fall, but you know what?”

“What?” I asked softly.

“What more of a kick in the ass does your libido need to make the most of sharing what a cell with someone you think is attractive—in an alien way?” Acer said.

I couldn’t help but laugh at that. The woman sure did have a way with words. More to the point—the more she spoke, the more turned on I felt myself becoming.

“But I, uh… Well, you know, you and your sisters did try to kill me,” I pointed out.

A sentence like that should have killed the mood, but Acer merely shrugged her skinny shoulders.

“What the hell difference does it make now?” she asked me. “What the fuck difference does any of it matter right at this exact moment? If it makes you feel any better, I never disliked you, never really felt any animosity toward you. You were just a mark, just a job, you know?”

“Some people might consider that a little chilly on your part,” I said with a wry grin.

“Let anyone think whatever they like until the fucking crocotta come home,” Acer said, pressing her foot more insistently into my crotch, so that I couldn’t help but give a little moan of pleasure. “Who gives a shit about any of that? Free yourself of the cares of others, of the obligations that you lay upon yourself and let others lay upon you, and you will become truly free, Justin.”

The woman’s silver eyes were boring into my own now, shining like hypnotic pools of purest mercury.

“I can't relinquish the responsibilities that I’ve agreed to,” I told her.

Acer grinned and sat up on her elbows. She bit her lip as she played footsie with my cock and balls. “Then just pretend you have for the next hour or so.”

I grinned back at her, my pulse picking up as if someone had just screwed the throttle on my heart.

“I guess,” I said, “that I can do that.” I made a show of looking around the room as Acer sat up and began fiddling with the zipper on the front of her leather one-piece outfit that reminded me of Trinity from The Matrix. “Not like we’ve got much else to occupy ourselves with, right?”

Acer Blade came at me like a cougar, like a snarling animal fueled by gasoline and vitriol and undiluted concupiscence.

Our clothes were off and on the floor in the time that it might have taken me to say, “Holy nippletease” had my mouth not been covered by Acer’s as we were stripping off.

Acer’s toffee-colored skin was hot, and her cheeks flushed as I ran my hands over her body. Her heart beat strong and fast in her chest, the heart of a warrior and a fighter.

My fingers slid around her back, up her shoulders, and back down to graze the tops of her buttocks. Then, they slipped round to her front, glided across her navel with the care of a blind person picking out words of braille on a page.

Acer sighed softly, closed her eyes, and tilted her head back so that I could nuzzle at her throat and lay a series of kisses along her collar bone. I ran my tongue up her neck while my fingers reached up and grabbed her silver hair.

To my surprise, although Acer started off like an incensed sex-fiend, she settled into a mode of caressing and kissing, exhibiting a breathtaking tenderness.

The fact that I more than half expected her to start tearing strips out of the skin of my back at any moment only added to the eroticism of the situation.

Acer’s fingers were twined through my hair, just as the fingers of one of my hands were tangled in her silver locks. She pulled my face down to hers. I made as if I was going to kiss her, but instead, I brushed her cheek with my lips. My stubbly cheeks tickled her as I trailed a line of kisses up to her ear, reading her, trying to spark some indignant anger out of her for not getting her own way.

Once more, I was surprised to find her playing the submissive role, her head tilted over to the side, quite of its own volition. She allowed me to nibble my way down her neck as I alternated between soft little bites and harder kisses. She reminded me of a vicious she-wolf that had been brought to bay by an alpha and was allowing me to do with her what I would.

It was a damned blood-heating thought.

While my lips were busy tracing a route down Acer’s neck to her collarbone, my hands were far from idle. They left her hair and face and moved with careful, considerate slowness around her thighs and ass, the tips of my fingers brushing back up her taut belly and ribs until my hands cupped her breasts.

Acer gave a guttural groan of longing as my fingers and thumbs caressed her diamond-hard nipples. She pressed her lips into my chest as she sought to stifle her guttural cries of pleasure.

It was the easiest and most natural thing for Acer to wrap her legs around my waist while we tussled on the sofa. It wasn’t the kind of clean-cut sex that you get in porno flicks—there would have been precious little to actually see, I imagine, if there had been some a voyeur gazing in on us. We were pressed together tight, our sweat and juices mingling together in the heat between us.

I could feel my cock rubbing up against Acer’s hot slit. Could feel it sliding up and down her pubic bone, which was sticky with her own wetness. I was only half-heartedly even trying to penetrate her, so good did it feel just humping her in this horny teenager kind of way.

“Just… just fuck me, will you?” Acer said into my ear, her voice quiet and fervent.

I lifted the woman off her feet, her legs still wrapped around my waist, while I knelt on the sofa and endeavored not to topple off and totally ruin the intimacy of the moment.

Acer pressed her heels into my firm buttocks, as if she was trying to press me closer, as close as she could possibly get. I groaned deep in my chest, a subterranean rumble of pleasure, which must have reverberated through the Metal Mage’s own chest.

Then, my hard cock pressed into the space between her legs and was engulfed by the velvety wetness of her box. Acer snarled into my ear as I pulled her down so that she was impaled upon my full length. She ground herself onto me like she was eager to try and stuff my balls up into her too.

We fucked in a way that I couldn’t remember doing before, more grinding and rubbing than actually sliding in and out.

Acer’s nails raised red lines on the back of my broad back as she ran her fingers across my shoulder blades.

We were face-to-face, rocking backward and forward, our breath rasping in each other’s faces, sweat slick on our chests. Acer’s silver eyes were half closed and, despite her having no discernable pupils, there was something about her gaze that told me she was miles away, enjoying our sex to the point of being transported from this luxurious prison cell.

I could feel something building inside of me, a feeling that suggested a banked and dammed river, a feeling that could only mean one thing. My ears were filled with the soft squishing and sucking noises of our crotches crushing against one another. Both mine and Acer’s breathing became louder and louder, the perfectly controlled temperature of the air rasping in our throats as we thrust eagerly against one another.

Acer tilted her head back and gazed sightlessly up at the swirling golden patterns of the roof.

Our thrusting and grinding became disjointed as we raced each other to our climaxes. Acer’s face was contorted in a knowing grin, even as she continued to stare up at the ceiling. Her arms were around my neck, her tits right in my face, jumping up and down, the dark nipples brushing my chin, occasionally grazing my tongue as I stuck it out.

Then Acer let out a loud and long cry of abandonment. I felt the muscles of her pussy clamp tight around my member and squeeze. In answer to this, the needle of my own climax crept up into the red. With a grunting cry that echoed Acer’s own, I spurted my load deep inside her. This only caused Acer to shriek all the louder.

“Oh gods, oh gods!” she said through gritted teeth. “That feeling! That fucking feeling! Fill me up!”

She lost control of herself then, leaned backward, and my cock slipped out of her, spraying cum up her taut stomach. Acer fell back onto the sofa, moaning like a delinquent little whore and rubbing my jizz over herself.

I relaxed into a sitting position, while my heart thudded in my chest, and watched the sight of Acer Blades covering herself in my spunk like it was maple syrup and she was a piece of bacon.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something protruding from the pocket of my cast-off morphing cloak.

My spell book.

Shit, that’s right, I thought. I didn’t even think about that. Still, I’ve never slept with a Metal Mage before, so it should be interesting to see what’s in the spell book.

While Acer chuckled throatily to herself and played with her nipples, I reached over and managed to grab the corner of the little book. Quickly, not wanting to be rude, I checked through it. One of my few remaining spell slots had indeed been taken up with yet another new spell. This one read:

Sword Dance (Metal Magic) - Conjures a quartet of magical swords that spin around the caster, simultaneously protecting the individual while also capable of offensive use with the caster’s mind.

“Sword Dance.” I tossed the spell book down by my discarded morphing cloak. “It doesn’t sound very much like the kinds of sword dances that they have back where I’m from.”

“They dance with swords on Earth?” Acer’s petite tits rose and fell as she crawled over to me.

“Yeah, in a way. I mean, I don’t know much about them, but I think the Scottish might do a jig using some swords, and the Turkish maybe. I don’t think anyone dies when they do them though.”

“Sounds dull,” Acer said.

“I’m actually not surprised to hear you say something like that. Don’t take this the wrong way, because what we just did was volcanically hot, but you were a little more tender than I might have expected.”

To my delight, Acer colored a little and gave me a shy smile. “Just because a tigress is a tigress doesn’t mean that she can’t have a softer side, does it?”

“No, it does not,” I said. “I would have been a little disappointed if you had turned out to be the simple, one-dimensional murderous assassin type, if I’m being totally honest.”

I flopped back. The Sword Dance spell. Not only had Acer and I seemingly patched up any differences we might have had, but I was also in possession of a spell that could be used both offensively and defensively. As far as ticking boxes went, a spell that could be used to protect me while also dealing damage to any foes was pretty great.

It did mean that I only had two slots left, though.

That meant that, if we ever got out of here, and accomplished our mission, I would have to find yet another way to expand my ability to learn new magic.

I puffed out my cheeks and closed my eyes. Acer, nude and lithe and slippery, pulled a blanket over us and snuggled in against me. The feel of her tight naked body pressed against mine soothed my soul like nothing else could.

“I can practically hear the cogs in your brain whirring, Justin,” the Metal Mage said to me, her voice sleepy and content. “What are you thinking about?”

“How the fuck we’re going to get out of here,” I replied, staring up at the ceiling, with its patterns of swirling, moving gold paint.

“And kill that fucking skinny Luctus asshole?” Acer growled against my chest.

“Yeah, if we get the chance, we’ll try and make that happen,” I said. “Something about that dude definitely doesn’t sit right with me.”

“His head doesn’t sit right on his shoulders in my eyes,” Acer said. “That’s why I’m going to knock it off.”

I nodded. “It’s probably worth treading carefully with him, though. Morally, I’m pretty sure his dock doesn’t quite meet the water, but I don’t think he’s going to be one of those guys who is easy to trifle with.”

Acer grunted. “He’s just another self-obsessed psychopath with ideas above his station. Don’t you think? He loves playing the role of the big badass, but those kinds of fuckers always let their egos lead to their undoing. They expect everyone to bow down to them, so when you don’t, it takes them on the back foot.”

I considered this carefully.

“I think you have a point,” I said.

“But?”

“But, in the time that I’ve been mixed up in this crazy world, I’ve met my fair share of people occupying high positions. That Luctus guy scares the shit out of the guards and gives me the impression that he doesn’t do what he does for fame or plaudits. In fact, I’d say he is one of those rare beasts that does things because he truly believes in whatever outcome he is trying to achieve.”

“Why do you think that?” Acer asked.

I shrugged and ran my fingers absently through Acer’s silver hair.

“The man, if he is a man, is trouble, that’s all I’m saying,” I said. “Taking him out of the picture is going to be far easier said than done.”

Silence fell. A silence broken only by the sounds of our breathing and the almost inaudible hum of the nexus that covered the doors and windows.

“C’mon, we better sleep,” Acer said, snuggling tighter against me. “There’s no knowing what kind of trouble tomorrow will bring. The least we can do is make sure that we’re as refreshed as possible to meet it.”

I nodded, settled back, and closed my eyes.

“True,” I said. “Just because trouble comes knocking doesn’t mean you have to give it a place to sit down, I guess. We best be ready.”

Chapter 11

We were woken, just as Acer had said we would be, by the dull rumble and thud and ponderous clicking of the intricate and unbreakable locks of our prison door opening.

The two of us had slipped easily to sleep on the sofa in our prison suite. We had spent the entire night there, sleeping the untroubled sleep of a couple on vacation, rather than two mages being held against their will.

I rose smoothly off the sofa, grabbed my morphing cloak that could change into any clothing I desired, and threw it around my shoulders.

Instantly, I was dressed in my habitual black pants, white shirt, and black jacket with the red silk lining. Even as I pulled my boots on, Acer had flipped over the back of the sofa and was slipping easily into her black leather garments.

“Who the fuck do you think this is?” Acer slid on her own boots and edged around the sofa to come and stand next to me. “It’s not even dawn yet.”

I readied myself, dropping into a lowered fighting stance. My staff appeared in my hand, a glimmering rod of changing colors that bewildered the eye. It was a vector that combined the power of three vectors in one, and it hummed in my hand as if it was eager to get to grips with the foe.

I puffed out my cheeks. If whoever came through that door had anything that even resembled ill will in their hearts, I was going to make it fucking hard for them to exercise it. They’d likely be staggering back out the way they came, wearing their own asshole as a hat.

Over my shoulder, I heard the silky metallic sound of Acer conjuring a bladed weapon, but I didn’t turn to find out exactly what kind of weapon that might be.

The door opened with a heavy smoothness that spoke of magically fortified wood that would resist even the most determined of spells or bulldozers.

The head of my staff came up, almost of its own accord, and pointed straight into the face of—

“Well, fuck me… How’s it going, Your Majesties?” I said drily.

Alura, the Gemstone Princess, stood outlined in the flickering torchlight that emanated from the corridor behind her. Behind her, I could see the bodies of two guards lying slumped against the walls of the passage. Next to her, looking as composed ever, was none other than Queen Hagatha herself.

The most powerful person in the entire Avalonian Kingdom raised one thin red eyebrow at my greeting.

“It would be safe to say,” she said, in that gorgeous accent of hers that seemed to caress the ears, “that the last time I was addressed like that was… No, I have never been addressed like that.”

I gave her a half-smile that might not quite have met my eyes. “My apologies, your Queenliness, but there’s nothing like being locked in someone’s dungeon—a five-star dungeon though it might be—to make a man forget his manners.”

To my surprise, Queen Hagatha’s beautiful head dropped a little.

“That,” she said, “is more than understandable. Given the circumstances then, I suppose that I can forgive your impropriety.”

I was a little taken aback at this. I’d never experienced anyone in a position of authority—let alone the position of authority—ever acknowledge that what they had done could be considered wrong. Ever.

“Justin,” Alura said, stepping forward, “I know what you’re thinking, but the Queen—Hagatha—had nothing to do with your and Acer’s incarceration.”

I didn’t answer right away. I was only human, and my very human skepticism reared its head. I took a breath and tried to force any hostility out of my eyes.

“Okay,” I said, “I hear what you’re saying, Alura, and I trust you. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this her house, so to speak?”

Queen Hagatha laughed lightly, but it was a laugh tinged with bitterness.

“If only that were true,” she said. “If the Castle of Ascendance could be said to be my house, then I must have some of the most conniving and untrustworthy tenants in all of history.”

I lowered my staff a little. “You’re really saying that you had nothing to do with locking me and Acer up? You didn’t see through the disguise I was wearing and set me up in that courtroom?”

The Queen shook her stunning head, her bright crimson hair swishing around her angular face.

“Trust me, Justin Mauler,” she said. “I had far more on my mind than worrying about whether some hideous old bureaucrat standing in front of me was all that he appeared to be. It will probably not surprise you to hear this, but I have become complacent over the years in detecting such threats, having my own people who are supposed to root out subterfuge and danger around me.”

I looked at Alura, who was gazing back at me with imploring eyes.

“Please, Justin,” she said. “Even if the two of you do not trust the Queen, then trust me.”

I turned to look at Acer out of one eye and gave her a nod. Not without considerable misgivings, which were written openly across her face, Acer vanished the magical shortsword that she had conjured.

I made my staff vanish with a thought and then pointed at the two prone guardsmen lying in crumpled heaps in the corridor.

“Your work, Alura?” I asked.

Alura nodded at the Queen of Avalonia. “No, that was Hagatha.”

The Queen raised her head. “It has been long overdue for me to stand up for what is right. For too long have I allowed others to get their hands dirty on my orders. No more.”

“How noble,” said Acer sarcastically.

“We better get those two inside,” I said, moving toward the door. “Are they dead?”

“Just stunned,” Queen Hagatha said.

“Then if you’d be so kind as to slice up some of those bed sheets in the other room, Acer,” I said, “we should get these little piggies all trussed up.”

Before too long, I had dragged the unconscious guards into the chamber and Acer helped me wrap them up like a pair of armor-clad Christmas presents. It was clear, just from looking at the two men, that Queen Hagatha had plenty of snap in her garters. Whatever spell she had used on them had been powerful, because the two sentries both had matching sets of black eyes and big lumps in the middle of their foreheads.

Out of kindness, we flopped the unconscious guards onto the sofa so that they would at least be comfortable. I didn’t like to think of the kind of ass-chewing they were likely to get when Luctus found out that Acer and I had escaped.

“Okay,” I said, once the sentries were secured. “Now what? And where’s Odette?”

Alura and Acer looked expectantly at Queen Hagatha. To her credit, although perhaps not surprisingly, the Queen of Avalonia didn’t show the slightest sign of being ruffled.

“Alura and I have been talking amongst ourselves,” she said. “She’s an old friend of mine. I’ve been surrounded by a plethora of sycophants my whole life, but there have been few people that I have honestly been able to trust to tell me how things are like her.”

Alura nodded her agreement to this statement.

“We’ve known each other since we were little girls,” Hagatha continued. “We were raised as royals together. We—”

“Look, this is all very cute and nostalgic, I’m sure,” said Acer Blade, with her customary tact and sensitivity. “Dawns coming, though, and that fucker Luctus doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy to linger over a cup of tea and a soft-boiled egg. Get to the freakin’ point, Your Majesty.”

Queen Hagatha took a breath. “I’m sorry—I just wanted to reiterate that Alura and I trust one another implicitly, and that you can follow my lead without fear of being betrayed.”

Acer grinned and summoned a supernatural icepick so that it revolved slowly in mid-air in front of her.

“Don’t you worry about betraying anyone, Queeny,” she said. “The first sniff I get that something isn’t right, and this little sucker will be going straight into that pointy ear of yours. Trust is something you earn—not something that can be given.”

Queen Hagatha bowed her head. “I understand,” she said, showing me that she was possessed of that singularly rare quality amongst the powerful: humility.

“All right, now that we’ve got all the posturing and not-so-subtle warnings of bloody retribution out of the way,” I said cheerfully, “how about you tell us what we’re doing next.”

Queen Hagatha nodded and motioned to the Gemstone Princess. “Alura has divulged to me your purpose for coming to the Castle of Ascendance. I intend to help you achieve your goal and sneak the hidden Creation Mages out of the castle.”

“You know where they are?” I asked.

“Not precisely,” Hagatha said. “I hadn’t been aware of their existence until Alura told me about them. However, there can be no secret more strictly confidential than the one of which you speak. It can only be hidden in one place. The Arcane Council, it seems, is not above keeping certain things from me. After conversing with my friend here, what I have long feared has become even more evident to me; that I am little more than a cat’s paw and a scapegoat for the Arcane Council.”

“The two least respectable animals—or animal and animal appendage, I guess,” I said.

Queen Hagatha smiled at me.

“It’s going to be all right,” I told her. “You’re clearly made of stern stuff. If you’re going to have to be an animal among the mages, then a scapegoat won’t do. From now on, we’re lions.”

Acer grinned savagely. “Excellent.”

“Very well,” Queen Hagatha said.

“And Odette? What’s she doing?” I asked.

“She is seeking to change hearts and minds within the castle,” Alura replied. “This will likely be the last chance we get to muster support from within the noble ranks. Any we can get will be helpful in the coming conflict.”

“That they will,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

“Follow me,” the Queen said. “We have to stop off on our way to the lower levels, where the deepest and darkest secrets of the Avalonian Kingdom are buried.”

“Stop off?” Acer stuck her head out of the prison door and checked that the coast was clear. “What are we stopping off for?”

“There are a few people whom I can trust, for one reason and another, who wish to help you in your plight,” the Queen said. “They wish to rise against the Arcane Council and join Reginald Chaosbane and the rest of your resistance in your quest to save the Universal Magic.”

I glanced at Alura. The Gemstone Princess smiled back at me.

“It’s fine, Justin,” she said. “When you see who they are, any misgivings you have will be laid to rest.”

“So long as misgivings are the only things of mine that are laid to rest today, then let’s go,” I said.

And, leaving the two guards to enjoy their concussions, we took off down the corridor, Queen Hagatha leading the way.

The Queen didn’t bother to use any form of stealth moving through the castle. It looked like she was using the old ‘hide in plain sight’ trick. If she swept gracefully through the various corridors and hallways, there was no need for any turncoat bastards to run off and tell their masters.

As it turned out, the halls were fairly deserted at this hour. There were only a smattering of guards, and they pointedly kept their faces respectfully averted when the Queen whisked by.

We moved further into the heart of the Castle of Ascendance. Gradually, the building became a little less formal and a little more homely. It struck me that we were heading into the recesses of the building that comparatively few got to see, even visiting dignitaries. The rooms and passages that might have been labeled the ‘inner sanctum’.

Queen Hagatha walked us briskly along a wide corridor, lit with fairy-powered lamps, and paused in front of a nondescript door of polished wood the color of honeycomb toffee. Pausing only long enough to ensure there were no sentries patrolling nearby, she pushed the door open and said in a hushed whisper, “Ladies and gentlemen, please come this way.”

Out of the room came three people; an older couple dressed in immaculate robes, coats, and jewelry that evidently cost a bundle, and a stern-faced woman dressed in green suede pants tucked into highly polished riding boots and a mail vest peeking out from under her black velvet jacket.

Both parties eyed one another suspiciously. The Queen gave a little sigh of frustration.

“We must keep the introductions regrettably short,” she said, turning to me. “But this, Justin, is Archmage Chillgrave and his wife, Lady Chillgrave. The woman on their right is Captain Steiner, my most closely trusted bodyguard. Of course, you know the Chillgraves’ daughter, Cecilia.”

The female Chillgrave had the same long hair as their daughter did, in the same shade of blonde, although there was, perhaps, a silvery sheen to it. Her father had long, wispy gray hair swept back into a thin ponytail, and he clasped a golden cane with his age-spotted hand.

“We have heard of you, Mr. Mauler,” Archmage Chillgrave said, “and we have watched you compete in the Exhibition Matches alongside our daughter.”

“In fact, we have met briefly, if I recall correctly?” Lady Chillgrave said, with the sort of icy hauteur that I imagined Professor McGonagall used when Harry Potter was being an idiot.

“I think we have, yes,” I said, trying not to smile at the slightly frosty reception. would have delighted me to adopt my most overly aristocratic accent and say something along the lines of, “And may I congratulate you on raising such a nubile and sexually adventurous minx in your daughter. Tell me, does she get her proclivity for having her ass eaten out while her clit is tickled from you, Lady Chillgrave?”

Not having much time for stuck-up types, I might have bowed to this compulsion, but I didn’t want Cecilia to get in trouble on my account. So, luckily for all concerned, I managed to hold my tongue.

Captain Steiner shook my hand in a grip of iron. Although her face was compressed into what looked like a semi-permanent frown, hinting that there might be some sort of stick up her ass, she was a good-looking woman. She had a fighter’s physique, evident even with the comfortable clothing and mail she was wearing. Her eyes were a deep brown color that gave nothing away, and her black hair was pulled into a high bun and wrapped tightly with a leather thong. Idly, I thought that she would probably look amazing dressed only in another kind of leather thong.

Queen Hagatha made the rest of the introductions hastily. Then, with a gracious wave of her hand, she commanded us to follow her.

Chapter 12

We moved further into the bowels of the vast stronghold that was the Castle of Ascendance. It was nice to see that every member of our thrown together little company didn’t need to be told that moving through the place in a ninja half-crouch was only going to gather suspicion like flies around a fresh butt dumpling. We all walked in the Queen’s wake as if we belonged there, as if we were simply being given an early morning tour of the castle by the most powerful woman in the realm, as everyone else did…

Captain Steiner stalked along at the head of the company, both acting and playing the role of bodyguard for real. She was guided along by the occasional whispered direction from the Queen, turning this way and that and descending staircases as required.

The fact that this woman, who Queen Hagatha had admitted was her most trusted bodyguard, didn’t know the way gave credence to what the Queen had said: that we were heading down to where few knew to tread. Clearly, she really was leading us to where the secrets of the Avalonian Kingdom were stored.

We descended further and further into the earth as, outside the five-yard-thick walls of the Castle of Ascendance, the sun began to rise, peeping over the eastern hills. The opulent interior decor that you would expect in a royal household gradually gave way to spartan utilitarianism as we went lower and lower.

Before too long, we were walking down corridors that weren’t papered or painted but were faced with simple bare stone. Expensive perpetually burning candles set in glass sconces emitted the only light as we spiraled down into the depths of the castle.

I could just begin to make out the grumbling of Acer, who was walking behind me at the very back of our little procession, when we emerged into a large circular hall. The atrium took up about as much square footage as a basketball court. It was illuminated by a burning globe of yellow fire that hung suspended from a chain in the ceiling. Doors of various sizes and shapes surrounded the chamber.

My heart sank. It reminded me at once of the strange lineup of doors that me, Leah, and Mallory Entwistle had had to navigate the last time that we were in the castle and were hunting for relics.

“Just what we need,” I muttered, “a puzzle that wastes our precious time.”

“Ah, but like all riddles, the problem of the many doors is only a puzzle to those who do not know the answer to it,” Queen Hagatha said.

“But Hagatha,” Alura said. “I thought that you said you’d never been to this place?”

“I haven’t,” said the Queen, “but I have been to other secret rooms down here. I have visited the treasury, a truly vast room that spans dimensions, is filled with gold, and stretches so far that you cannot see one end from the other. There is a greenhouse down here and a menagerie that holds some of the rarest plants and creatures that have ever been seen under this sun or the suns of other worlds. There is a lightless room, which holds vats of pure night, a tall thin room that stretches to the highest pinnacle of the tallest tower and is used to measure the forms dreams take, and a bare room that no one goes into and is said to hold Death’s younger, far more miserable and cruel brother; Taxes.”

“That is all very good and interesting, Your Majesty,” Archmage Chillgrave said, “but how do you know what door we need to use now?”

The Queen smiled. “Can’t you guess?” she asked, exhibiting a teasing playfulness, despite our current situation.

“Because it’s the only one that you haven’t been through?” I asked.

The Queen’s bright eyes fell on me. “Exactly.”

She wheeled and strode into the center of the room, and we joined her. Once all of us were standing safely within a circle of engraved gold set into the floor, the doors began to fade in and out of existence, leaving stretches of blank stone behind them.

“What the hell is this?” Acer asked.

“This is simply to ensure that no one who has known the secret of these doors can lose their marbles and find their way through by muscle memory,” Hagatha said. “The doors themselves all look different as you can see, it is only their location within the room that alters.”

“Going insane is a risk living in the Castle of Ascendance, is it?” I asked.

The Queen gave me a knowing look. “Like I said, there are many strange and wonderful things to be found down here, Justin. Some of them can set hooks in your mind if you let them, pull your thoughts this way and that. Being driven mad is an acceptable gamble when it comes to probing the deepest questions that a mage can explore.”

After half a minute, the doors stopped their shuffling and settled into their new positions.

Taking only enough time to scan the new layout of different doors, Queen Hagatha strolled confidently over to a door. It looked white at first but, as we all approached, the colors shifted and changed. When we were all standing before it, the door looked like it had been carved out of a giant abalone shell.

This myriad scheme of scintillating colors was a color that I was beginning to associate with Creation Magic.

“Justin?” The Queen motioned with a graceful hand toward the door.

“You want me to go first?” I asked.

“I think it would only be right,” Queen Hagatha said magnanimously. “Seeing as you are a Creation Mage.”

“All right,” I said, “I guess there’s no point in lingering around the cheese dip. May as well take the plunge.”

I reached out and took hold of the handle. Just before I pushed the door open, I noticed fresh-looking fingerprints around the metal of the handle.

My brow puckered.

“This looks like it’s been opened. And recently.” I looked over my shoulder at the Queen. “Do you know anything about that?”

The Queen shook her head, a frown of her own wrinkling her flawless brow.

“No,” she said. “Nothing. Like I said, the Arcane Council told me nothing of this place.”

“Fucking Arcane Council…” Acer growled.

It gave a broken, tearing screeching sound as its hinges protested and then banged against the wall of the stone passage beyond.

We trooped down this comparatively dim corridor. I led the way now, feeling the broken ground under my boots. The spooky feel of the place was exacerbated by the flickering torches that guttered in a non-existent breeze and burned with a dull mauve flame.

I rounded a corner and was greeted by yet another door. This time, the door was made of hand-whittled wood.

I conjured my staff into my hand, depressed the handle, and shoved the door open.

Beyond the door, I was greeted by what had to be a tomb. Not one of those slimy, moldy dank tombs that all too often prove to be the popular hangout spot for ghouls, zombies, and other crusty nasties. No, this space was more akin to some ancient Egyptian or Persian tomb. There were all kinds of magical machines and devices in here, like an exhibit of an arcane museum.

“Are those - are those sarcophagi?” Alura asked, coming into the room behind me.

“They would certainly look to me like sarcophagi,” Captain Steiner said as she bulled her way through the small group and stepped out into the quiet cavern, her eyes scanning for hostiles.

“Are they empty, the sarcophagi, Captain Steiner?” I asked.

The captain whispered something that sounded like an incantation, then she reached out and nudged the lid of the sarcophagus nearest her, which must have weighed at least a thousand pounds, to one side like it was made of cardboard.

“This one is,” she said curtly. “Well, not empty exactly. Empty of life I should have said. There’s a desiccated body inside.”

“What about the rest?” I asked.

Captain Steiner looked at Queen Hagatha. The ruler of the Avalonian Kingdom nodded. “Do as Justin Mauler asks, Steiner, if you please.”

Captain Steiner then went to examine the other sarcophagi.

I frowned and looked around Then I approached Queen Hagatha. “You’re sure that this is the only room in which you haven’t been?”

“Yes,” Hagatha nodded. “I have a near perfect memory, and I have not set foot in here in my life.”

“Shit,” I said. “Then where the hell are the Creation Ma—”

The sound of a sniffle suddenly echoed out from the back of the gloomy space.

“There’s a passage back there in the murk,” Acer said.

“Let’s check it out,” I said. “Mr. and Mrs. Chillgrave, if you want to stay here and guard the way we came. Don’t want to be caught with our pants down and our asses on show now, do we?”

Ignoring the spluttering indignant noises that Cecilia’s parents made, I moved quietly toward the back of the large tomb-like space. Treading carefully, and nearly soundlessly, it was not long before I saw the entrance to another rough-cut passage at the back of the main chamber.

“Easy does it,” I muttered to myself. I moved patiently along the rough-hewn corridor that was only intermittently illuminated with the occasional sputtering mauve torch.

The sniffling, snuffling sounds grew louder as I progressed. Acer followed behind me, then Alura and Queen Hagatha, while Captain Steiner crept along as our stoic rearguard.

I emerged like a wraith out of the dim lit corridor and found myself in a far smaller chamber.

A bedchamber, I realized.

On the right side of this bedchamber, sitting on a bed, was a little wizened man. The snuffling and sniffling noises were emanating from this old fellow.

I scanned the room for any hint of another threat, but there looked to be nothing. I half-wondered whether this guy was laying a trap, acting as a weak and unimposing piece of bait. But his tears appeared to be genuine.

As it was, the skinny depressed-looking bastard seemed to have about as much substance to him as a piece of overcooked spaghetti.

“What’s going on in there?” Alura whispered from behind me.

I raised my hand to let her know that I had things under control.

Because no one likes to be taken by surprise when they’re weeping, I leaned further into the room and cleared my throat loudly.

The little old man didn’t budge. Just continued to cry softly into his patched and frayed robes. His knees were drawn up, and he had his face pressed into his spindly arms that were crossed on top of them.

I cleared my throat again. Louder this time.

He must have heard that, I thought.

“Hey!” I yelled.

The man sat bolt upright, his long white beard flying up and around his face like a towel flapping on a washing line. His head looked exactly like an enlarged walnut, to the point that I briefly racked my brains to see if I could remember there being any sorts of magical creatures that had walnuts for heads. His ears were large and endowed with about six times more hair than his head. As I had noticed before, his robes were patched and frayed, but they looked like they might have been quite opulent at some point in the long distant past.

“Hi,” I said as the little old man’s jaw dropped open to reveal a mouth filled with exactly zero teeth. “How are you going?”

The little old man said nothing. As the seconds trickled by and he made no move to utter a single syllable, I began to think that he had succumbed to his lonely life down here. I figured his mind had checked out a while ago and gone fishing on some sunny shore that was inaccessible to the sane.

“Can you, uh, can you understand me?” I asked.

The man nodded his walnut-looking head.

“I’ve got a couple of friends with me,” I told him. “Do you mind if they come in and we ask you a few questions?”

The little old fellow nodded and wiped his red-rimmed eyes with his long beard.

“Great,” I said.

I leaned back around the corridor and waved the others in. Each of them looking curiously at the little old man who was still curled up on his solid stone bed.

When Queen Hagatha came in, the man threw himself from the thin mattress, to prostrate himself on the floor in front of her, with such violence that I thought Acer had gotten bored and chucked a throwing knife at him.

Then, I realized that he was simply showing his respect for the woman that he clearly considered to be his ruler.

“Please, get up,” Queen Hagatha said graciously.

I leaned down and helped the old boy to his bare feet. Standing in the middle of that little bare cell, the wizened old man looked even more forlorn and motheaten than he had sitting down.

“And who is this?” Queen Hagatha asked me.

“I’m not sure if he speaks—” I started to say.

“My name is Herbert Crumm, Your Majesty.” The spindly mage bowed so low that his beard swept the floor and he rose with a couple of old peanut shells lodged in it.

“A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Crumm,” the Queen of Avalonia said benevolently.

“The pleasure is most assuredly all mine, Your Majesty,” Herbert Crumm said in a voice that was cracked and broken. “Although, if I might be so bold, I am somewhat surprised that it has taken your royal splendiferousness quite so long to come down and see me. I understand that being queen must be a pretty darn-tootin busy job, but still… When I was entrusted with the supreme task of attending to Avalonia’s most precious secret all those years ago, there was some mention of annual holidays and being relieved at some point.”

“My most sincere apologies, Herbert,” Queen Hagatha said, “but up until this morning, I had no notion that you or this room or whatever it was that you have been watching over even existed.”

Herbert Crumm’s wrinkled face fell, slowly, as if tiny supports under his skin had finally crumbled and given way.

“You had… no… no notion?” he asked in a hoarse voice.

The Queen shook her head. Then, with a familiar kindness that I found incredibly touching, she sat down on the stone bed and patted the spot next to her.

Captain Steiner tensed and took a half step forward as Herbert Crumm sagged down and sat next to the Queen of Avalonia.

“No… no… no notion at all?” Herbert said, his voice quavering with a mix of indignation and anger.

For a moment, I thought he was about to start weeping again, but then the wrinkled walnut of a face creased up into a collection of a thousand frowns.

“Then what in the name of the gods’ saggy ballbags have I been doing down here all this time?” he cried in outrage.

He leapt up onto the bed with a sprightliness that would have done a hare on bath salts proud.

Captain Steiner intercepted the little man with the ease and fluidity of an NFL left tackle and squashed him flat against the wall.

“Oooooh,” Acer said, wincing.

With a quick, professional thoroughness, Steiner went through the little mage’s pockets, relieving him of a spoon that looked like it hadn’t been washed in, well, forever, and a small bit of paper with a doodled picture of a naked woman on it.

She then peeled the mage off the wall and sat him back down on the bed.

“Don’t move that fast around the Queen again,” Steiner told Herbert in a neutral voice.

Herbert managed to suck in the breath that had been crushed out of him by the flying bodyguard and investigated his skinny frame with tentative fingers.

“Are you all right, Mr. Crumm?” Queen Hagatha asked.

“Y-y-yes, thank you, Your Majesty,” Herbert wheezed. “Not a bone broken and with an impact of what must have been close to eight-hundred pounds of force…” He pointed with a shaking finger at Captain Steiner. “She’s very good.”

“The best,” said the Queen with a small smile.

“Now, Herbert,” I said, leaning in so that I could cut to the chase. “The reason that we’ve come to visit you in your cave today is to ask you a simple question.”

“Yes, sir?” Herbert said.

“Where are the Creation Mages?” I asked.

Herbert Crumm’s face brightened. “I knew that there must be others who were aware of their existence, who could remember that they had been put down here for safekeeping. The fact that only those members of the Arcane Council were aware soon struck me as odd and, if I’m honest, bloody unethical.”

“We only found out recently, Herbert,” I said.

“Please, call me Herb,” said Herb.

“Right, Herb. We only just found out about them very recently,” I repeated. “Are you telling us that the Arcane Council have known about the existence of these Creation Mages for years?”

Herb nodded his head, his white beard wagging. “That’s right.”

“And they were stored down here?” Alura asked.

“How?” Acer asked.

“Through a devilishly tricky and mana-hungry spell that could only be sustained in a building as inherently magical as the Castle of Ascendance,” Herb said.

This was all very interesting, but we needed answers to a far more pressing question.

“Herb,” I asked, “where are the Creation Mages now? We saw the empty sarcophagi out there. Is that where they were being held?”

Herb’s knobby face crumpled into misery yet again. He sniffed loudly and then dabbed at his eyes with his beard, cursing softly as he stabbed himself in the eyeball with one of the peanut shells he had inadvertently picked up.

“There were Creation Mages here, Your Majesty, oh yes indeed there was,” the old mage said, addressing Queen Hagatha directly. “But those who were imprisoned here are all dead now.”

“Dead?” Hagatha said in a soft voice. “Dead how?”

“Well, I suppose technically speaking, their hearts ceased to beat and their minds shut down,” Herb said, “but if we’re talking about the spirit, then—”

“The Queen is aware of the concept of death, Mr. Crumm,” Captain Steiner said. “She wishes to know how and why they died.”

“Ah,” Herb said, eyeing the captain in a way that suggested he was not keen on being scraped off the wall again. “Ah, yes. Yes, I know the answer to that too, don’t I just.”

“Well, let’s hear it then, chatty man,” Acer Blade said, from where she was leaning against a wall and picking her fingernails with a dagger she materialized from nowhere.

“They were drained of their magical power,” Herb said, with a conciseness that I credited to the large knife in Acer’s hand.

“What do you mean drained of magic?” Alura asked, her crystalline brow furrowing. “Who would do that? And why?”

Herb was wringing his hands, as if he knew very well what this might look like.

“Please remember,” he squeaked, “that I was just an attendant chosen to stay here, long ago. I was forbidden from speaking to them, but that I would one day train them in the art of magic. But only when the Arcane Council deemed it safe for me to do so. ‘Course, they took their fucking sweet time about that, didn’t they! The rotten, lousy, no-good sons of—”

“Easy, Herb,” I said.

“Sorry,” Herb said, simmering down somewhat. “It’s just that I came to care for each of them, even though I never spoke to them. I was very sad to see most of them die, to see the life and power sucked out of them, like they were fruit that needed to be juiced.”

“Who did this, Herbert?” Queen Hagatha asked.

Herbert shrugged. “I was always banished when members from the Arcane Council came down to run their experiments. But Herbert Crumm is not an ignoramus! I was able to put two and two together. From what I deciphered and heard and figured out while cleaning up the awful messes that they left behind, they were doing all this to fuel the machinations of the… of the Immortals.”

“Immortals?” Alura said. “Who are the Immortals? What do they want?”

I punched my fist into my palm with a smack that reverberated around the room. “Do you think it matters what they wanted or who they are now?” I said bitterly. “As far as I can see, the mission has failed.” I shook my head disappointedly. “With all the Creation Mages down here dead and reduced to raisins, Universal Magic is doomed.”

“They’re not all dead,” Herb said unexpectedly.

I blinked and looked earnestly at the little man to make sure that he still had a firm hold on his marbles.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“They’re not all dead,” Herb repeated.

“But you said that you were sad to see them die,” Acer said.

“I said that I was sad to see most of them die,” Herb said reproachfully. “The daemons are in the details, young lady.”

“Not all the daemons, Herb,” Acer said pointedly, spinning her knife around her fingers.

“Herb,” I said, “I suggest that if you don’t want Acer getting cranky and turning you into carpaccio, I would strongly advise you to clarify to us what you mean by that.”

“I mean, that there is one who still lives,” Herb said. “Why do you think I was crying to myself just now?”

“Gods-damn, Herb, I don’t know,” I said exasperatedly. “You've been down here mostly on your own for who knows how long. You could have been crying because you just accidentally trod on your own big ass beard, how the fuck would I know?”

A look from Alura made me take a breath.

“I’m sorry, Herbert,” I said. “Clearly, I was wrong. Why were you crying?”

“Because I came out of my room—this room—to find the last of them being levitated out of here not two hours ago!” Herb said, his voice wobbling dangerously close to the edge of waterworks country.

Holy shit, we were that close, I thought.

“And who was she? Who took her, Herb?” I asked, putting a consoling hand on the old mage’s bony shoulder.

“Bernice Silvertongue was her name,” Herb said, wiping his eyes with his beard once more. “It was an Arcane Council member who floated her out, some young sneering punk who I didn’t recognize. Said she was being taken through a portal, bound for the Gray Peaks to be placed within the dwarven stronghold of Lahmyra, at the behest of someone called Luctus.”

I exchanged looks with Queen Hagatha and the three other women in the room. The unspoken decision was made between us in an instant.

“If we leave now, we can probably catch up with her,” the Queen said.

“Herb, have you got any stuff in here?” I asked the wizened mage as Captain Steiner, Acer, and Queen Hagatha hurried from the room.

“Uh, there’s a dingleberry in the chamber pot in the corner,” Herb said awkwardly. “But it’s from some time ago. To be honest I don’t get the diet I should down here. Leaves me a little irregular.”

Stupidly, without processing what the man had just said, I glanced over into the corner at the chamber pot sitting there. I winced and turned hurriedly away.

“Jeez, it looks like King Kong’s finger,” I said, shuddering.

I turned my attention back to the old man. “Not what I mean, Herb. I mean, do you have anything other than yourself that you want to bring along?”

“Bring along?” Herb asked, perplexed. “Bring along where?”

“On the journey, Herb,” I said. “We’re finally taking you on that vacation you’re owed.”

Chapter 13

We made our way hurriedly back up through the Castle of Ascendance. The castle was stirring now, like an anthill that had just been given an exploratory poke with a stick by a toddler. It was almost exclusively servants—maids, kitchen boys, butlers, and stablehands—who were going about their early morning business.

The Queen, obviously, attracted a lot of attention as she glided with her usual effortless grace through the halls. The housekeepers and doormen bowed reverentially as she passed, and she lavished them with the sorts of smiles that probably made their days.

Once we were back above ground, and in passages that were clearly as familiar to her as the back of her hand, Captain Steiner took point. She strode ahead of the Queen like an icebreaker before a galleon, and the domestic staff scuttled out of her path.

As we made our way back into the more elaborate, beautifully decorated and busier parts of the Castle of Ascendance, I began to worry about opportunistic people spotting us.

“Your Highness,” I said, catching up with Queen Hagatha’s deceptively speedy strides, “I’m thinking that we should try and get our hands on some sort of disguise before the Arcane Council finds out what we’re up to.”

The Queen gave a disparaging little laugh. “Those manipulative knaves won’t be out of bed at this time, Justin. Intrigue and politics stay up late and rarely kick back the covers before the sun is well over the horizon.”

“I appreciate that,” I said, “but it’s their spies that I’m more worried about. I’d be very surprised if there weren’t more than a couple of the domestic staff earning a tidy little sum by running a side-gig of reporting the comings and goings of yourself to those who wish to keep you under their thumb.”

The Queen considered this. “You’re right. I’m sorry, I got so caught up in the thrill of all this that I quite forgot to really think.”

We rounded a corner and found ourselves in one of the many large halls. At this time in the morning, it was practically empty. There were a couple of dallying bureaucratic-looking types, but they quickly left when Captain Steiner scowled at them.

“Now,” Queen Hagatha said in a low voice once we were alone, “Justin has drawn my attention to something that I should have seen myself. I was, however, too caught up in this sudden mission of ours to pay heed to it. Basically, it would save us trouble, and potentially buy us time, if we were to look as if we had a semi-legitimate reason for being out and about. It will arouse less chat amongst the domestic staff if it appears we are on some above-board business, rather than hurrying along like naughty children that are making off with a cookie jar. Justin, do you have a plan?”

I didn’t, but I was getting pretty good at winging things by now, and a scheme happily bloomed in my head.

“Captain Steiner,” I said, addressing the raven-haired bodyguard, “I’m thinking it’d be easiest if me and Acer don the armor of the Arcane Knights. With you leading our sexy little procession, that’ll keep us disguised and make it look like we’re simply escorting Queen Hagatha and her good pal the Gemstone Princess some place.”

“What about the old man?” Captain Steiner asked me, nodding her head at Herbert, who was using our stop as an opportunity to snatch some much-needed breath.

“I’m not… that… old,” the weedy man replied, his beard fluttering with the strength of his labored exhalations.

Captain Steiner raised an eyebrow. It was a good look for her; the slightly bemused expression on the face of someone who could snap your neck just by snapping her fingers was one that sent a little shiver down the spine of my pecker.

“You look like the model of a man made of expired cheese straws,” she said matter-of-factly.

Herbert seemed offended but didn’t have enough air in his lungs to respond.

“I think Herb fits the bill of scribe pretty well,” I said, running a thoughtful eye over the old guy. “Have you got a bit of parchment and a stub of charcoal on you or something, Herb?”

Herbert wheezed something that sounded vaguely positive and then gave me a thumbs-up.

“Cool. All sorted then,” I said.

“What about us?” Archmage Chillgrave asked in his unctuous and crisp voice.

“You guys just be yourselves,” I said, “but maybe stay behind the Queen and Alura. Showing proper deferential respect and all that.”

The Chillgraves nodded with austere graveness.

“I think your plan is a sound one, Justin Mauler,” Captain Steiner said to me approvingly. “Follow me. The nearest armory is not far.”

The captain led us through a series of grand corridors until we came to a nondescript door that may as well have had ‘Service Entrance’ stenciled across it. After Captain Steiner had unlocked it with a key at her belt, we passed through it and found ourselves in a plain stone corridor that smelled faintly of sweat and armor polish.

Captain Steiner stuck her head through a door to our right. There was the sound of some good-natured laughter being abruptly cut off.

“Out!” bellowed Captain Steiner, and there were the sounds of mad scrabbling as whatever guards had been inside hastened to get out through another door.

“You two get in there and get changed,” Captain Steiner said. “Breastplates, rerebraces, and vambraces are on the left, greaves and cuisses are on the right.”

I gave the captain a vaguely amused look. “What do I look like, Sir Galahad to you, Captain? Does it look like I spend my downtime heading off to tourneys and jousting with my friends back at the Academy? I have literally no idea what you just said.”

“I second that,” Acer said. “I got as far as breastplate,” and she put her hands over her petite rack, “but after that, I’m all at sea.”

Captain Steiner sighed.

“Chest and arm armor on the left, legs armor on the right,” she said.

“Wasn’t that easier?” Acer said, stepping past the captain and entering the room.

“Not really, no,” Captain Steiner replied.

With the captain’s help, we slipped hurriedly into the beautifully crafted, surprisingly lightweight plate armor, I couldn’t help but check out Acer. We didn’t strip off as we were going to keep our clothes on under the suits of armor, but the Blade Sister did unzip the front of her motorcycle style jacket so that she wouldn’t get too hot.

She flashed me a smile and a cheeky nipple when she caught me looking.

“You better not,” I said, returning the smile as Captain Steiner helped me strap on the thigh plate that I assumed was the cuisse. “If you make me pop a woody dressed up like this, I might concuss my penis.”

“And we wouldn’t want that now, would we?” Acer said, slipping on her breastplate.

“My penis certainly wouldn’t,” I agreed. “A lot of the time, he’s the brains of the operation.”

Once we were disguised in our metal outfits, which came complete with helmets, Captain Steiner led us back out into the main body of the Castle of Ascendance.

“Have you got any idea where we’re actually going right now?” I whispered to Alura through the slit in my helmet. I did my best to march along next to the Princess of the Gemstone Elementals with something close to a professional soldier’s skill.

“Hagatha tells me that there is only one portal that is convenient to the castle and is kept open at all times,” Alura whispered back to me out of the corner of her mouth.

“That’s the way that the Arcane Council will have smuggled this last Creation Mage out of here?”

“It’s the only plausible route they could have taken,” Alura told me. “Every other portal closes down during the night, to minimize the risk of enemies breaking through from the other sides and attacking the Castle of Ascendance. The Arcane Council would need the Queen’s express permission to open such a route, and obviously they wouldn’t want her knowing why they would want to use one.”

“But surely this portal would be pretty heavily watched?” I pointed out.

“Using this route would be a lot quieter, as those guarding and monitoring the royal portal would assume that the Council was operating in an official capacity, I imagine,” Alura said. “If you do something brazenly enough and dress it up in the trappings of bureaucracy, you can get away with anything.”

She had a point. It was a well-known fact that if you wanted to get into most places on earth, all you had to do was wear a high-visibility jacket, hold a clipboard, and adopt the air of someone who did algebra in their spare time for fun. Tedious bureaucracy was the ultimate disguise.

“And how do we get to this royal portal?” I asked.

“In my day,” Herb said, “before I was elevated to the position that you found me in—”

“Would you say elevated?” Acer said, her voice echoing out from the slot in her helmet. “I mean, we found you about two miles under the castle. Just saying…”

“It was a turn of phrase,” Herbert Crumm retorted. “Anyway, as I was saying, in my day, the royal portal was most often accessed by the royal airship. Is this not still the case, Your Majesty?”

“It is, Herbert,” Queen Hagatha said as we exited the castle and stepped out into the early morning light. “We are making now for the docking station of my personal vessel, which is kept ready at all times: the Royal Airship Venture.”

“Wow, what a morning,” Alura said. She said it aloud, but I figured she was talking to no one but herself.

I smiled. Despite the rising pressure to get out of the castle as quickly as possible, I couldn’t help but push the visor of my helmet up and take in the sight.

We were walking through a beautifully landscaped garden, full of the smell of honeysuckle and lavender and mint. Flowers were just starting to unfurl from their nocturnal slumbering, and there were a few fan-tailed birds grabbing an early worm here and there.

Above us, the sky was putting on one of its special morning displays.

Veil after veil of thin dusky cloud was lifting, fading away as the rising sun touched it. By degrees, the forms and colors of all the things around us were beginning to be restored, changing from the grays and purples they took on at night.

“Good gods…” Herbert Crumm said weakly. “It’s been some time since I have feasted my eyes on that sight. Nothing quite like watching the dawn remaking the world in a pattern as old as time itself, eh?”

“You said it, Herb,” I muttered as we hurried around a marble fountain that tinkled like a watery piano. “I’ve seen plenty of dawns since coming to Avalonia, but they’ve mostly been the kind of dawns that are groggy with lack of sleep, hectic with early adventure, or marred by the kind of hangovers that feel like someone’s taken off the top of your head and stirred your brains around with a stick.”

Herb grimaced.

“But this one…” I said, struggling to find the words to articulate what I was seeing, as the sky was bathed in pink and red light, as if paint had been spilled by some massive hand and was seeping across the sky. “This one is full of deep silence and absolute clarity of perception, don’t you think? I feel like, more than anything, it’s spurring me into action!”

I caught Lady Chillgrave raising her blonde eyebrows in mild surprise at my work. I wondered whether I’d surprised her with my talk.

I gave her a wink, and the aristocratic woman looked away.

We walked briskly around one of the wings of the castle, down through a short tunnel that led under a pristine lawn, and exited to be confronted by the Royal Airship, Venture.

“Fuck yeah!” I breathed.

“Why is it called Venture, Your Majesty?” Archmage Chillgrave asked the Queen.

“Because there is no nobler calling than venturing out to see the world, or venturing to make the world you already know just a little bit better,” Queen Hagatha replied.

The small company hurried toward the airship. The vessel was levitating magically twenty feet in the air and was secured to the ground below by anchor ropes. We walked briskly up the beautifully worked gangway. I glanced over my shoulder as I strode up it, only to see that Herbert had remained standing at the bottom.

“You all right, Herb?” I stood aside so that Alura and Acer could get past me.

The little old mage was standing at the foot of the gangplank, twisting the hem of his patched robes in his bony hands so that I could see the thin, pale sticks of his skinny shins.

“Yes. What? Oh, yes. Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine. I’m fine. Fine as frog fur,” he gabbled.

“That’s good that you’re fine as… frog fur,” I said, “but we should be getting our A into G, don’t you think?”

“A into G?” the ancient dude repeated.

“Asses into gear,” I explained.

“Ah, yes, but you see, I haven’t actually flown for, well, ever,” Herb said, “and I find myself slightly reticent to start now, you see. I mean, if you think about it, I’m higher up now than I’ve been in over three-quarters of a century, and we’re only at sea level.”

I looked at the Castle of Ascendance, trying to quiet my imagination. It was filling with the clash of armor being hastily donned, the angry cry of Arcane Knights ordering people around, and the heavy footfalls and swishing cloak of that creepy fucker Luctus as he stalked our way.

“I appreciate that, Herb,” I said, hastily making up facts as I went, “but you know that you have more of a chance of being struck by lightning than you do of going down in an airship.”

Herb sucked his gums, leaned down, and pointed to the crown of his walnut-like head.

There was a black smudge in it, which I had taken to just be a bit of missed dirt or grime.

“Lightning strike,” he said, spraying spit as only a man with no teeth trying to pronounce the word ‘strike’ can produce.

“Yeah, but it doesn’t strike twice, does it?” I said, trying to keep my voice light and impatience-free.

Herb spun a one-eighty and jerked up his robe to reveal an ass that was as pale and wrinkled as vintage goat’s cheese. On it was another black smudge, bigger than the other.

“Oh, come on,” I said.

“Strike number two,” the old man said. “Happened five years apart.”

I puffed out my cheeks so that my lips flapped.

“Herb, we need you, man,” I said. “You’ve spent most of your life looking after this Bernice Silvertongue and her friends. You owe it to her and to yourself to see this through. There’s a great wide world out there for a man of your curiosity to explore.”

Herb took a few doddering steps up the ramp.

“But everything I’ve ever done is here,” he said in a quavering voice.

“There’s nothing for you here now, Herb,” I assured him. “Only an unpleasant interview with a dude named Luctus, whom you’ll only have one thing in common with.”

“And what’s that, pray?” asked the little old man.

“You both don’t have any hair.”

Herb took a few more steps up the gangplank. Behind me, I could hear Captain Steiner calling out orders, yelling at Acer and Archmage Chillgrave to unfasten the lines that anchored the Royal Airship Venture to the ground.

“Have you ever heard of the idiomatic expression, ‘Red sky in the morning, mages warning’?” Herb asked me, taking a few more uncertain steps.

I reached out my hand in what I hoped was a friendly and confidence-boosting fashion.

“Yeah, I’ve heard of that,” I said, “but you know that’s all just superstitious horseshit, right?”

“It was on such mornings that I got zapped by those damned lightning bolts,” he said.

“Just bad luck,” I said, fervently hoping that we weren’t bringing an airborne Jonah on board.

Herb took another step and another. He glanced wistfully back at the towering confection of glimmering stone that was the Castle of Ascendance.

“Come on, Herb,” I said, reaching out and grabbing the old man by his knob-knuckled hand. “Trust me. You’re going to love sailing through the sky and having the wind blow through your… scalp.”

Herb puffed out his concave chest like an anorexic pigeon, and his beard stuck out like a bristling bush.

“Ah, bugger and balls to it,” he said. “Let’s sail!”

Chapter 14

To my surprise, as big and comfortable as the airship was, with its two masts, nineteen sails, and twenty mana-cannons, it could still be easily sailed with only Captain Steiner at the helm.

Against the general run of form, we managed to get to the royal portal without a hitch. This was, mostly, because we were sailing the Queen’s own whip, but also due to the don’t-fuck-with-me demeanor of Captain Steiner.

We were halted only very briefly by the guards who had been stationed up in the clouds, some thousand feet above the ground. A small rowing boat detached itself from a magically floating office that reminded me a lot of a classic American diner, only levitating in midair and without any milkshakes.

This rowing boat came sculling through the wispy clouds, carrying a couple of pompous-looking portal agents. Before they could even come along beside us and request to be let aboard, Captain Steiner had given them such a tongue-lashing that they were halfway back to their office with their tails between their legs before they knew it.

“And don’t forget to set the portal coordinates to wherever it was that the last ship went through!” she bellowed in a voice that must have carried all the way into the castle.

“Yes, Captain Steiner!” one of the sentries called back, firing off a salute, losing his balance and toppling backward onto the other man who was rowing.

I stood at the prow of the Royal Airship Venture, gazing down at the landscape that was moving at what seemed like snail’s pace down below. Occasionally, I would look up and make sure that Herb hadn’t fallen overboard yet. Once he had gotten over his initial fear of flying, the scrawny old mage had become engrossed with the way the land below receded. He was scuttling around the deck, peering over the sides and jotting down frantic notes on numerous bits of paper that he had secreted around his person. So excited was he at one point that, just as Captain Steiner had adjusted our course, he’d craned so far over the starboard side that it had only been my quick reactions that had stopped him falling and exploding over the countryside below. I’d insisted on tying a line around his waist, which he seemed to agree was an excellent idea.

Acer, Alura, and Queen Hagatha were inside the captain’s quarters, going over maps of the dwarven stronghold of Lahmyra. They were planning on what they might do when we got through the portal, if the ship we were chasing had already made it to the dwarven mining and lumber producing city. They had invited me to join them, but I had too much experience with how reality unfolded in the complete opposite way to how our plans were designed.

Cecilia’s mom and dad were standing up by the helm, chatting with the taciturn Captain Steiner. The good-looking, no-nonsense captain answered their questions in clipped monosyllables, while her brown eyes stayed glued to the portal that was getting gradually nearer and nearer.

I studied the portal myself, eyeing it with the unshakeable trepidation. I guessed it was the Earthling in me. Great swirling vortexes of rippling color always looked like instant, mind-warping, body-tearing, limb-distorting death. It didn’t matter that they might be as ordinary as train stations in the world of Avalonia—for me they would always be fraught with peril thanks to watching movies like Interstellar and Event Horizon.

The portal was big, as big as you’d expect something capable of swallowing up an airship to be. However, as we drew inexorably closer to it, I began to feel the unmistakable tug of it on my mana reserves. It was a unique feeling. A sensation that I imagined birds felt when they were instinctively pulled north or south on their migrations.

We cruised smoothly toward the magical maelstrom, made the eerier by the fact that it swirled and whirled in complete silence.

The bow of the Royal Airship Venture entered the portal, sliding into the immaterial multi-colored nothingness like a hot wire into a slab of butter.

There was a lurching pull that was more mental than physical and then—

—we emerged out into sullen, storm-racked clouds of flint gray.

Wind that hadn’t been part of our material world only a moment before whipped and tore at my clothes, howling like a banshee through the rigging of the airship and flicking Herbert Crumm’s beard this way and that so that he had to tuck it down the front of his robes.

“Ah!” the little wizened mage cried as he was blown across the deck by the force of the gale, his heels leaving twin skid marks across the wooden deck. “Now this is more the sort of thing I was expecting when we set off!”

“You’re happy about this?” I exclaimed, shielding my face from a sudden burst of stinging rain.

“Happy? What kind of lunatic would be happy about this?” Herb fired back at me. “I said I was expecting it. It would have been too much to ask for old Herb to just wet his toes with air travel, wouldn’t it? I had to get thrown in at the dang deep end!”

He heaved as the deck rocked alarmingly beneath us and his cheeks bulged. With a concerted effort, he swallowed. He looked more than a little green around the gills.

“You just threw up in your mouth, didn’t you?” I asked.

“Like you wouldn’t believe, young man, like you wouldn’t believe,” Herb said.

A blaze of light lashed the clouds around us. There was an almost instant booming crack as thunder exploded, following hot on the heels of its buddy, lightning.

Herb quailed and shrank down with his hands over his head.

“Oh gods,” he said, “don’t tell me it’s going to be third time’s the charm for me and the lightning!”

I leaned down, undid the line around Herb’s waist, and then scooped the old man up. He must have weighed all of fifty pounds.

I half ran down the deck of the lurching airship as the wind bit at my ankles and tried to trip me.

I made it to the captain’s cabin, kicked open the door, and tossed Herb inside. The old man landed like a cat—a drunk cat that had an inner ear infection—and staggered into the beautiful wood-paneled wall.

“Stay in here, Herb!” I yelled over the sound of the storm, “and tell the girls that I’ll be up front. I think I saw something when you and I were running back here just then.”

Without further ado, I closed the door on the relieved old man and headed back to the bow, making my way down the port side of the ship. I craned over the side as I went, careful to keep one hand on the taffrail.

“Did I see it? Did I see it?” I muttered to myself, trying to keep my hair from blowing into my eyes and obscuring my vision. “Did I… Ah-hah. Yes, I did.”

Lightning illuminated the smoky clouds that ringed us, and another clap of thunder set my head to ringing, but neither made me look away from the sight below.

It was hard to make an accurate guess at distance with the cloud and the weather, but it looked like there was another ship about five hundred yards away. It was an airship that wasn’t as grand as the Queen’s ride, but it was still expensive looking. It was smaller and built for speed—a perfect choice for people who were looking to smuggle something away from somewhere as fast as possible.

The ship’s dove white sails stood out clearly against the crumpled swathe of craggy woodland behind it. We were on the edge of a chain of mountains, the biggest of which were still some miles ahead of us and loomed like the teeth of a world-swallowing monster.

I squinted against the wind, trying to make out more of the ship. I noticed lights flickering and popping across its deck. I leaned forward, as if that would make any difference to my ability to make out what was going on. Either someone was throwing an impromptu rave down there, or there was a serious magical knuckle up.

I turned and threw my hands up, trying to catch Captain Steiner’s attention. Waving my hands around like an octopus that’d ingested energy drinks intravenously eventually snagged the attention of the woman sailing our craft.

I pointed over the side, trying to indicate that she should go down and to the left, but either my hand signals were useless, or Captain Steiner couldn’t really see me. They were both possibilities that left us with the same result.

“Fuck!” I said.

The ship jolted under me as yet another ripping detonation of thunder went off just overhead.

I looked back down at the other ship. My fellow Creation Mage, Bernice Silvertongue, was down there somewhere, possibly on the verge of getting killed by whatever top-class a-holes had decided to transport her.

I had to do something.

Luckily, making up my mind as to exactly what I had to do was decided for me. There was a staccato flash of rippling lilac light down by the other ship. This firework display was followed quickly by a strange rending, clanging sound.

Suddenly, one of the masts blew apart at the base. From my distance, it looked like the four-foot-wide mast just popped, showering miniscule splinters in all directions.

Then, the Royal Airship Venture passed into a localized cloud bank, and everything turned to fluffy white fog.

“Oh, come on!” I yelled at the weather gods. “Not just when it was getting good!”

As if in answer to my cry, our ship emerged out of the clouds a few moments later.

“That doesn’t look good,” I said to myself, staggering a little as a fresh gust of wind buffeted me.

The whole ship was going up in flames. It was billowing smoke, listing to one side, and starting to fall right out of the sky. What was more, from where I stood, at the prow of the Royal Airship Venture, I could see that the dying airship was heading straight toward the peak of one of the lower mountains.

It wasn’t going to happen in the next few seconds, but sooner or later, that airship was going to hit the mountain below. There would only be one winner in that contest.

I reached down and touched the Capture Orb that always dangled from a belt loop of my outfit. Inside this orb was the essence of the Amber Dragon, Kazrith, that I had bested not too long ago on a previous adventure in the vast mountain of Dragonhold.

“Are you really going to do this?” I asked myself aloud, looking around at the wild weather that surrounded us.

But I already knew the answer to that question.

If I wanted to save Bernice, then it looked like this was the only way.

“Fuck it, what else can I do?” I stepped up onto the top of the taffrail that ran around the whole ship.

I turned and looked up at the poop deck, where Captain Steiner was busy wrestling with the wheel, thinking that it was probably a good idea that someone knew I was about to jump ship.

Captain Steiner was too engrossed with her task of keeping our own airship from being torn apart by the storm, but Lady Chillgrave and her husband saw me standing on the rail.

Cecilia’s mom gripped Archmage Chillgrave’s arm and pointed down at me.

I waved.

They looked confused.

I pointed at my wrist to indicate a watch then held up ten fingers.

“I’ll be back in ten minutes,” I yelled at them.

Whether or not my words reached them, I couldn’t be sure. I hoped that they’d got the gist though and didn’t think that I’d decided to jump from the ship for the hell of it.

And then, I leaned casually backward, dropped off the side of the ship, and let gravity do the rest.

I plummeted down for a second or two, enjoying a sensation that was usually only available to skydivers and lemmings, then called forth the Amber Dragon with my mind.

The great beast flared into life under me. Where a moment before there was only a long, terminal drop to solid rock below, there was now over three tons of dragon.

Kazrith might have been long in the tooth as dragons went—his eyes were clouded and rheumy and a few of his scales had seen better days and needed a polish—but he was one tough son of a bitch, too. He also had a couple of traits in spades, something that other younger dragons didn’t have in such abundance; experience and cunning.

The Amber Dragon’s scales felt wonderfully warm under me. The raw mana that I could feel flowing through him like blood was a heady smell filling up my sinuses.

“All right, big boy,” I said, “let’s get in there and get that woman out of there. You feeling strong enough for two?”

Kazrith let loose a long rumble which set my teeth to chattering. He was laughing.

“I didn’t think you’d mind,” I said. “Got nothing to do with the fact that she looks hot as hell, does it?”

The dragon roared, dipped a wing, and headed toward the falling airship. As we dived, the gale force winds rocked me in my seat between the dragon’s wings and almost swept me off. I hunkered down and made myself as wind resistant as possible.

Under me, I could feel Kazrith growling in frustration. The wind and the rain were making it hard for him to fly with any real degree of accuracy. This wouldn’t have mattered so much if the plan hadn’t been to scoop Bernice up in his claws. However, the last thing we needed was for the Amber Dragon to get in close enough to affect a rescue, and then be blown into the ship and destroy it.

“Shit,” I muttered again. “Go into a holding pattern, as close as you can, while I figure out what to do, Kazrith.”

As I swooped around the stricken craft on dragonback, I caught sight of a beautiful female mage on the top deck, standing where the helmsman would usually stand and pilot the airship.

Or, she would have been standing by that big wheel, if the big wheel had still been intact. Where it should have been was a shattered chunk of wood and a long blood trail that was smeared across the deck and ended at the taffrail.

It looked as if the wretched bastard who’d been steering the ship had been blasted to pieces.

This woman’s hair flew like ragged black shadow around her face. Her skin was a pale and icy blue and seemed to glow in the moody storm light. She was dressed in shades of gray and silver, her pewter colored coat flapping around her thighs. The rest of her attire looked to be made of rags that were wrapped tight around her body, apart from where one had come loose and snapped and twisted in the strong winds.

She was standing, steady as a rock, in the middle of that bucking and heaving deck, letting loose with a ton of spells at the robed soldiers hunkered down on the main deck.

Even with the boat listing hard to one side, this female mage, who I assumed must be the one and only Bernice, was causing utter chaos. How Bernice had found some way to break free of her chains or bonds or magically induced coma, I had no idea. What was clear was that she had broken free and was now in the middle of raining down sweet hell on her captors.

She looked to be enjoying herself too, as far as I could make out. Light blazed from her outstretched hands and ringed her head in a halo that only those angels that are secretly into Cannibal Corpse and Jordan Peele horror movies can usually conjure.

As my Amber Dragon fought the sky itself so that we could get in closer, the doomed ship sank closer and closer toward the mountain below. The vessel looked like it still had enough mana within it to keep it from dropping like a ton of bricks onto the mountain side, but not enough to gain any altitude. Even if it had, there was no way for anyone to steer it now that the wheel had been obliterated.

Bernice ducked a stream of green spinning discs that zipped over her head. She caught a sparking blue rocket in her hand, which was suddenly encased in a glove of molten gold. She spun the rocket in her palm, gestured toward a man below her, and sent it streaking toward him. The man was hit in the chest by the spell. There was a shower of blood and gore, and his head was wrenched into his torso before exploding out of his own ass.

What kind of fucked up spell was that? I wondered to myself.

There was a chorus of screams from the men on the deck. It wasn’t every day that you saw one of your colleagues have his head blown out of his own ass.

Bernice rose into the air then, the mist and vapor in the wet air coalescing under her and turning into a platform. This fresh vantage point of hers completely negated the boxes, barrels, and coils of thick rope the crew were using as cover.

Bernice laughed with delight as she let loose a barrage of glittering ice balls. These semi-transparent frozen globes rolled all over the deck, bouncing off anything in their way and skittering under men and women’s feet.

There was a pause.

Then, they detonated.

Flurries of what looked to me like snowflakes sprayed in all directions.

They may have looked like snowflakes, but whatever Frost Magic spell was powering them shredded the nearby hapless robed figures like grenade shrapnel. Limbs went spinning off the sides of the ship, skin was peeled from bone, and blood burst out in crimson profusion before being whipped away by the wind.

“Holy crap,” I murmured in awe, “this chick really has some power.”

At that moment, my fellow Creation Mage looked up and saw me circling her on Kazrith. I raised my hand to wave at her, but quickly cancelled this plan when she hurled a bolt of iridescent aqua light at me.

“Barrel roll hard left!” I yelled at Kazrith, while at the same time I conjured a Flame Barrier shield.

Kazrith dropped and rolled. My Flame Barrier shield exploded into fragments of flame as the aqua-colored spell punched into it.

“Shit, she thinks we’re an enemy!” I said to the dragon. “She’s never going to let us grab her thinking that.”

I racked my brain. There was only one solution.

“Take me in as close as you can,” I said, “and when I jump, make sure you bail out of spell range. Got it?”

Kazrith grunted in the affirmative.

“Let’s go,” I said.

The Amber Dragon whipped across to the left, driving hard against the howling gale. When we were within fifty yards of the sinking bow of the Arcane Council’s airship, I stood on the dragon’s back and launched myself into the air.

I fell.

Just as I was about to plummet past the prow of the ship, I activated my Flame Flight spell. I rocketed forward, pale flames streaking out behind me. My feet landed on the deck of the airship, and I immediately kicked one of the Arcane Council’s crew members in the nuts. The blow doubled the man over, and I slapped him on the back and hit him with a full dose of my Paralyzing Zap spell. The man crumpled like a wet shirt.

Bernice Silvertongue mopped up the last of the Arcane Council’s crew who had so foolishly allowed her to break free. She launched herself off her floating platform, flipped through the air, landed on the one unbroken mast, and began to run down it.

“Holy fuck that’s awesome,” I breathed.

As Bernice sprinted down the mast, she loosed a spray of glittering black powder from her hands. This powder fell like sand before coalescing and wrapping up the remaining bunch of Arcane Council goons like they were birthday presents. Then, with a casualness that was quite impressively terrifying, the magical black sand dumped itself overboard, taking the Arcane Council thugs with it.

That just left me and Bernice alone on the deck.

“Uh, hi,” I said, not sure how to address this raven-haired badass. “My name’s Justin. I’m a Creation Ma—”

Bernice raised her hand, and one of the deck planks ripped itself free of the deck and corkscrewed toward me like a ten-foot-long javelin.

I used my Metamorphosis spell to conjure Gemstone armor. The makeshift spear thumped into my chest and clattered to the deck.

Bernice and I exchanged looks.

Her eyes narrowed.

I returned the look and gave her a lop-sided grin.

“Okie dokie,” I said, “let’s do it your way, then.”

Chapter 15

Bernice raised her left arm and made a cutting motion at me with it. A trio of coruscated blue bats popped out of the ether with a sound like a cow pulling its leg out of deep mud. They zipped toward me, chattering wildly, their fangs dripping with steaming yellow foam.

I didn’t know what venom those little magical fuckers were packing, but I’d rather have Lil Wayne chewing on me than one of them. I also made a guess that this Bernice was a wily one and that she was using these bats as a distraction of some ki—

I threw myself to the side in a neat roll, only just avoiding the heavy barrel that Bernice had silently levitated over my head with her mind and let drop. A couple of hundred pounds of salted pork exploded over the deck as the wooden barrel burst its bonds and I rolled to my feet.

I cast my newly acquired Sword Dance spell as soon as I was upright again.

Three swords materialized into being, sliding out of the ether with a sound like a Star Wars blaster going through a sheet of silk. Instinctively, I grabbed hold of the weapons with my mind. I whirled them around, not picturing where I wanted each individual blade to go, but picturing how I wanted them to protect me and act.

The bats converged on me, all slavering airborne anger.

The swords twisted and spun so fast that they were mere streaks of silver, flashing in and out of sight in the moody storm light.

Schnick.

Schnick.

Schnick.

Three bats reduced to half a dozen half-bats. Gooey, greasy magical entrails spilled over the deck of the airship before vanishing in puffs of silvery smoke.

The swords whirled to a stop and faded into the air. Perhaps Bernice expected me to be a gentleman and show her some manners. Give her another go at me, maybe?

“Look, I get it, you’re a Creation Mage, right? Well, so am I,” I said, hoping the truth of my words would get through the rage in the woman’s head. “It looks like you’re wanting to go down with the ship, but you don’t have to. I’m a friend. Why don’t you hop aboard my dragon, and we can talk about this?”

Bernice spit at my feet. Evidently, she hadn’t been sold by my sincerity.

I ground a tooth or two. We were running out of time, and I was quickly running out of patience. My manners too were at a low ebb. All in all, she could’ve picked a better day.

I let loose a Lightning Skink to distract her, taking a leaf out of her book. Then, I doubled down and summoned a pair of large undead wolverines out of the ether. As they materialized and roared their challenge at Bernice, I imbued them with my Leech spell. This gave them the ability to infect my chosen enemy with the curse. If one of the undead wolverines happened to inflict an injury with their teeth or claws, Bernice would find herself slowly weakened and her mana would bleed out and be consumed by none other than yours truly.

That was what was supposed to happen, on paper. The thing about real life, though, is that it doesn’t give a shit about paper or plans. Bernice pressed her hand to the deck of the ship, and a slick of ice shot out from where her palm was pressed to the planking. It engulfed the oncoming Lightning Skink, freezing it in place.

Once she had disabled the skink, Bernice launched herself into the air and effected a graceful hover. This looked to be a relatively simple spell, but it solved her problem of the undead wolverines because there was no way for the creatures to get at her, floating as she was ten feet above the rolling and heaving deck.

With an almost contemptible squeezing of her fist, Bernice crushed the Lightning Skink inside its icy prison, then she conjured a pair of handheld devices that looked very much like Magma Bombs and lobbed them down at my undead wolverines.

And my Flame Barrier shield was waiting right there to catch the magical devices.

I was getting quite skilled at casting that particular spell, which wasn’t surprising seeing as it had been one of the first spells I ever unlocked. This time, I channeled and shaped the Fire Magic to give the barrier a slight elasticity. This made the thrown grenade-type objects bounce right back at Bernice.

She was quick, that Creation Mage, I’ll give her that. Quick and damned skilled. Her eyes widened a fraction as her own bombs flipped back up toward her. The next moment, there was a curving rock barrier, which looked like a breaking wave of stone, between her and the bombs. It was a spell I recognized as Rock Wall, Rick having used it on more than a few occasions.

The two bombs detonated in twin bursts of blinding blue light. Light beams erupted out of them, scything down the undead wolverines where they had been snapping and snarling below where Bernice had been levitating and blowing them overboard. They disappeared into the wind and clouds.

Bernice’s rock wall crumbled under the power of the detonation. Perhaps, because the spell had been hastily applied, the barrier had not been saturated with as much mana as it might ordinarily have done. Whatever the reason, the Earth Magic shattered. Bernice was hurled out of the air, caught in a cloud of flying stone as her spell broke.

I was moving as soon as the bombs had rebounded from my Flame Barrier spell. Bernice hit the deck hard, not having the time to recover. As she landed, the airship tilted violently. The deck lurched up and smacked her, driving the wind out of her.

I was sent staggering into the taffrail, cracked my hip painfully into it, and then bounced off it and bowled onward. I knew that I’d probably not get a better chance to save the furious Creation Mage then right then. Right now, it looked like she would rather be spread over a mountainside in small bits than be returned to the clutches of the Arcane Council.

If she’d said something along the lines of, “I’m never going back to prison” right then, in the best traditions of The Fast and the Furious, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

I reached out and grabbed her as she got to her hands and knees, but then I sent enough mana juice into her, in the form of a Paralyzing Zap, to stop a she-bear in its tracks.

Bernice went rigid, letting loose a dull whine from between her taut lips, and then collapsed.

“Okay, time to go,” I said, not allowing myself the luxury of a self-slap on the back.

Utilizing the adrenaline coursing through my body, I bent down and lifted the senseless Creation Mage into my arms. She was slender and slight, all hard muscle under the strange, ragged clothes that she wore.

The airship gave another great lurch, and I almost toppled over, without my arms to balance me. Under me, I could almost feel the timbers of the magical craft contorting and twisting under the strain, as the storm blew it toward the peak of the mountain.

“Kazrith!” I bellowed, seeing the dragon banking to my right and fighting his way through a flurry of rain. “Kazrith! A little help here!” I made a mental picture of where I was on the ship and what I proposed to do and sent it beaming out to the Amber Dragon with all the force of my mind.

I ran across the deck, heading for the port side taffrail, which was sticking up in the sky due to the airships’ massive tilt. The whole vessel had almost reached the critical tipping point. A few moments more and it would roll right over and smash down into the peak that was drawing closer and closer.

I ran. My leg muscles screamed at me as I traversed the growing gradient of the deck.

Then, I leapt.

I sailed out into the cloudy void, Bernice clutched in my arms, my legs bicycling in midair. Hundreds of feet below me, the mountainside spread away; hard, rocky, unforgiving, and very, very fatal.

There was a shriek. The cloud swirled and whipped around me.

And Kazrith shot under me.

Pooling my mana, I used a burst of Greater Flame Flight to try and arrest mine and Bernice’s fall a little. Still, I landed on the Amber Dragon’s back, my legs going either side of the spinal ridge.

In hindsight, I was pretty lucky—I could have landed asshole first on one of the protruding spinal spikes that ran down Kazrith’s back. I managed to hold onto Bernice, whose head flopped against my chest, and keep my balance by clamping my thighs tight.

“Back - back to the other airship, please, Kazrith,” I said, my voice just a little hoarse from expending so much mana in so short a time.

The dragon growled in his throat. With some difficulty, he turned his great head into the buffeting wind and headed toward the bulk of the Royal Airship Venture.

There was a great, world-shaking, crunching smash that boomed out across the landscape from behind us. Twisting around in my seat while trying to simultaneously keep my head down and out of the wind, I watched the Arcane Council’s clandestinely commandeered airship plow into the mountain peak.

The impact of that two-hundred-ton sky vessel hitting the mountainside was a truly awesome sight. Awesome in every sense of the word. The timbers buckled and exploded outward in a deluge of man-long splinters. The one remaining mast, as thick around as a mature oak tree, snapped like a twig and landed on the poop deck, caving in the captain’s cabin. Then, the mana-magazine—the reservoir on board from which the manas cannons drew their magical energy—ruptured.

There was a dull whumpf that I felt in my chest, even while we were beating a hasty retreat, and Bernice stirred in my arms. The wreck of the dying airship burst apart in an expanding bubble of wood, magical blue fire and snow, rock and minced flesh.

As the blue fires faded away, leaving only an imprint of them on my retinas, there was a dull rumble and an avalanche broke from the very peak of the mountain. The final shattered remains of the airship were swept down the side of the mountain and consumed in a roar of snow and ice.

I turned away from the carnage and breathed out a small sigh of relief.

“My mana might be a little low, Kazrith,” I said to the Amber Dragon, “but, on reflection, things could have been a whole lot worse.”

The dragon growled in agreement, flapped his wings, and headed for the airship with our prize.

Thankfully, even just climbing a few hundred feet higher than we had been, where the Royal Airship Venture was circling, the air was a little calmer. It still wasn’t the kind of weather that you’d pick for a pleasant afternoon’s ride on a hot air balloon, but it was stable enough for me to stand on Kazrith’s back and then jump off and use another burst of the highly mana-sapping Greater Flame Flight to get myself and Bernice on board.

It was only when we safely back on deck, with the solid wood of the Royal Airship Venture’s hull beneath us that I allowed myself to totally relax.

I let out my breath, grunting slightly as I settled the unconscious body of Bernice a little more comfortably in my arms.

I looked up to where Captain Steiner was standing at the helm, still unable to leave the wheel due to the weather worrying at the Venture like a dog at a hare. She caught my eye, her hair around about her face, and gave me a single nod.

Coming from her, I figured that was about as close as I would get to a meaty high five and a popped bottle of champagne. There was something, just for a second, that might have been an impressed smile tugging at her lips. Then her hair was blown across her face, and I lost sight of it.

I walked toward the rear of the ship and was greeted at the door of the captain’s cabin area by old Herbert Crumm and Lady Chillgrave.

To my astonishment, Cecilia’s mom’s eyes were shining with excitement. She stepped out of the shelter of the comfortable cabins and ushered me into the warmth and cover of a maple lined little hall.

“By the good gods, that was something to see, Mr. Mauler!” she said to me.

I nodded at her, not quite sure how to respond. Before, she had been standoffish with me, to put it mildly. This sudden blaze of warmth, coming straight after yet another near-death experience, caught me off guard.

I was saved from having to say anything by the arrival of Alura, Queen Hagatha, and Acer.

“One down, three to go,” I said, nodding at the Creation Mage. “Not sure how we’re going to find three more, but at least it’s a start.”

“She’s alive?” Acer asked me, flopping the unconscious Bernice’s head over to one side with a nudge of her hand.

“Wouldn’t have been much point bringing her back here if she wasn’t,” I said.

“Here, let us take her,” Alura said in her kindly way.

Gently, I lowered my fellow Creation Mage’s feet to the floor. Alura and Acer put one of her arms over each of their shoulders.

“Make sure she’s comfortable,” I said, “but also make sure that you bind her up good too. She has power, and lots of it. I’m not sure if you saw what was going on down there…?”

“We saw enough,” came the crisp and proper voice of Archmage Chillgrave, stepping in through the door.

They carried her through to a comfortable parlor. Even from inside the nicely upholstered quarters that the Queen usually occupied, we could all hear the strained creaking of the rigging and the flapping snap as the sails filled and emptied.

“How’s Captain Steiner going up there?” I asked Archmage Chillgrave.

Cecilia’s father watched Alura and Queen Hagatha make a crude but comfortable bed for Bernice Silvertongue on one of the velvet-covered couches. Then he said, “I get the feeling that the good captain relishes this punishing and violent weather.”

Queen Hagatha gave a little laugh. “Yes, I imagine she does give that impression. It has been too long—in Captain Steiner’s eyes, at least—since she has been abroad on a mission of any real danger. Theoretically, being promoted to the captain’s position of the Queen’s guard is the greatest honor that any soldier can aspire to. However, I would imagine that a woman of such a temperament has been secretly chafing for something like a killer storm to shake up her sleepy days.”

Alura slipped a pillow under Bernice’s head. Queen Hagatha then walked over to a writing desk and pressed a hidden button. A concealed drawer slid out of the floor directly under the desk itself. Reaching in, the Queen of Avalonia procured a pair of manacles that glowed with a green eldritch light.

“Those wouldn’t be courtesy of Idman Thunderstone, would they?” I asked.

The Queen smiled as she snapped the manacles shut around Bernice’s wrists. “Indeed they are. The Eldritch Prison’s finest, before Thunderstone went on the run, of course.”

“Are those the ones that not only physically restrain, but also essentially immobilize the wearer’s magical abilities?” Acer asked.

The Queen looked impressed. “They are indeed. Extremely handy when dealing with high-risk prisoners or captives. From what I’ve been told, they interrupt the wearer’s ability to access their mana pool and, thus, use any of their spells.”

I didn’t need to ask how Acer knew what kind of cuffs they were. No doubt, Idman shackled Acer and her sister in them. Come to think of it, he might still have her sister wearing them, only for totally different reasons…

Shut up, brain, I thought to myself, trying to repress a shudder.

“You’re going to want to bind her legs at the ankles and knees too,” I said.

“You think she’s that dangerous?” Alura asked me.

I shrugged. “All I know is that it was a fucking close run thing, that fight. There’s no reason not to be over-cautious with this woman. Once we win her over to our way of thinking, and convince her that we have no intention of doing her harm or imprisoning her, she’ll be one hell of an asset for our cause.”

Alura nodded. “If that’s what you think we should do, then we’ll do it.”

“Great,” I said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m just going to wash up a little and maybe grab a drink.”

“There’s a washroom just off the hall we walked down to get in here,” Queen Hagatha told me.

“Thanks,” I replied and left the room to go and sluice a bit of water over the back of my neck and my face.

Chapter 16

When I was done cleaning myself, I left the washroom and went in search of something cold and alcoholic.

I had just found a crystal decanter of a dark orange liquid when Herb popped out of nowhere and cleared his throat.

I did well not to spill a drop of my drink as I poured it and consumed it, almost in one action. I smacked my lips appreciatively and poured another.

“How’s it going, Herb?” I asked the old mage.

“Marvelously, marvelously, thank you for asking, Justin,” Herb said.

“Want a drink?”

“What is it?” Herb asked.

“Well, I thought it was melon wine, but it turns out I was wrong. Honestly, I’m not a hundred percent sure what it is. But I do know that after about six of them, it’s not going to matter.”

“It’s alcoholic?” Herb asked in a fascinated voice.

“I sure hope so,” I replied, “otherwise it’s well past its expiry date, and I’m at a loss as to why it burns all the way down.”

Herb’s eyes sparkled with excitement as he examined the crystal carafe. “I never really did a lot of drinking back in my youth. I was drafted into my position when I was just sixteen, you know.”

“And they didn’t even give you enough time to have one last blowout on the town with your boys?” I asked.

Herb shook his head.

“That’s rough,” I said. “But hey, if this isn’t the day for trying new things for you, I don’t know what is.”

Herb narrowed his eyes at the sloshing contents of the decanter. He took it off me, unstoppered the top, and took a sniff.

“Goodness gracious me, that smells like the hairy asscrack of one of the fouler types of demons!” he said.

I raised my eyebrows. “Really? I thought it smelled pretty good.”

“It smells like it could take flesh from bone!”

“It does have a bit of zip to it,” I admitted. “Really clears out the sinuses and gives you a warm glow.”

“Sounds like a medicine of sorts,” Herb said, “though from everything I’ve read and everything you hear about hangovers, you wouldn’t suspect that the stuff had any redeeming qualities at all.”

“Well, you see, that’s the thing I find most interesting about booze,” I said. “It’s how multifaceted it is.”

“How so?” Herb asked me, leaning against the table and running his fingers thoughtfully through his beard.

“Well, if something not so great happens to you, right? Like, a friend of yours has his head pulled off by a ghoul, say, then you drink in an attempt to forget what happened and cancel out reality. Conversely, if something fucking great happens—rescuing a Creation Mage from a falling airship just before it smashes into a mountain—you drink in order to mark the occasion.”

“I see,” said the old mage.

“Then, there’s also the way that, if nothing at all has been happening, and you have a few drinks, nine times out of ten, you will actually make something happen.”

Herbert Crumm’s knobby face fell a little. “That sounds like a young man’s game. I feel as if that time for me has flown.”

“In that case, I guess we better try and make up for lost time, Herb,” I said matter-of-factly. “Here, hold this.”

I handed Herb my drink. Then, I grabbed another glass, set it on the table, and poured the ancient mage a hearty measure of the orange liquor.

We clinked glasses.

“To those who have seen us at our best and seen us at our worst and can’t tell the difference,” I said.

Herb blinked in a confused fashion.

“It’s a toast,” I said.

“A toast?”

“Yeah, you know, like a little sentiment or observation about life that we can drink to,” I said.

“Oh, right,” said Herb.

“Why don’t you make one?” I urged him.

“A what?”

“A toast.”

Herb paused for a moment, and then his face lit up from within.

“Up the ass,” he said.

I shrugged. “Haven’t heard that one before, but I guess it’ll do.”

We drained our drinks. I poured us two more, while Herb coughed and spluttered so hard that, if he’d had any teeth, he might have shaken them clean out of his head.

“I can’t believe you managed to save Bernice, Justin, I really can’t,” Herb said. “I was watching from one of the portholes, and I don’t mind telling you, old Herb’s heart was in his mouth!”

I clapped the old boy on the back.

“Let’s just hope that she’s going to be willing to sleep with me for the good of the Universe after I zapped her ass,” I said.

“Zapped her ass?” Herb asked me interestedly, holding out his glass for a refill.

“Yeah,” I said as I obliged the skinny old man. “I had to give her a jolt with one of my Strom Magic spells to bring her down. I’m hoping that she doesn’t hold it against me. There’s nothing like being electrocuted to put the damper on romance, they say.”

“That’s an extremely specific expression,” Herb observed.

I laughed.  “I’m sure it’ll be fine. She struck me as nothing less than a professional bonafide badass. I’m sure she’s not going to hold a little shock against me, not after we explain to her the lay of the land.”

“And you zapped her in the ass?” Herb asked.

“What? No. No, not literally in her gluteus maximus. I just mean that I shocked her with a Paralyzing Zap.”

“Excellent, excellent,” Herb said, one eyelid drooping just a little. His mostache was stained orange from diving so enthusiastically into his glass. “Because that would’ve been a shame.”

“Paralyzing Zapping her in the ass? Why?”

“Because, it’s a very nice ass, isn’t it?” Herb said.

I couldn’t deny it, and I said as much. “I’ll drink to that, Herb, you dirty old bastard.”

Herb tittered merrily to himself and clinked glasses with me again.

After we had discussed the merits of Bernice’s behind for a few minutes, I drained my drink and excused myself. I left Herb with the decanter, giving him strict orders to do his best to make up for lost time. The only reply I received was an encouraging string of hiccups.

I made my way back to the parlor where I had left the ladies tucking in Bernice. It was empty now, except for the slumbering form of the Creation Mage, who was now covered over with a blanket too, courtesy of one of the women.

I gave Bernice a quick check over to ensure she was safe and that she was secure, then I left the captain’s cabin and went topside in search of the rest of the crew.

I found them all gathered on the poop deck. Captain Steiner was still wrestling with the airship, her arms straining, but she looked to be winning by degrees.

“Need a hand, Captain Steiner?” I asked.

Steiner gave me another one of her tight little smiles. It was almost as if the woman was embarrassed at anyone finding out that she had a personality, as if being anything other than a professional soldier would somehow ruin her street cred.

“Are you kidding me, Mauler?” she said. “I haven’t had this much fun in too long.”

I gave her a smile in return, plus a wink. “Glad to hear it. Great job on keeping this baby in the same vicinity as myself and Kazrith by the way. The weather was wild enough that every moment I was on that dragon’s back with no free arms was a moment too long.”

Steiner inclined her head at my thanks.

“Any time,” she said. “And thanks a bunch for providing me with such a show down there. You’re quite the warrior, Mauler.”

“I try,” I said.

“You do more than that, Earthling,” the captain said. “What I saw down there, you rescuing a woman who was keener on making you dead than coming quietly, that was real heroism. I’m honored to have seen it.”

“That’s a fine thing to say, Captain Steiner,” I said respectfully. “Means a lot coming from someone who has obviously kicked her fair share of ass in her time.”

“Where is that dragon of yours anyway?” Captain Steiner asked me.

“That’s a good question,” I said.

I walked slowly over to the stern rail, looking out into the cloud behind us. We were leaving the main body of the storm, which was trundling steadily onward to give the mountain range that had claimed the life of the other airship a damn good lashing with its thunder and lighting. The clouds ahead of us were lighter, fluffier, less gray and ominous.

“Kazrith?” I called out into the air, using my mind as much as my voice. “Are you out there, pal?”

The Amber Dragon dropped out of the clouds above with a thrumming whoosh of cold air and came to glide lazily along behind the Royal Airship Venture.

“There you are, big guy!” I said, grinning.

It didn’t matter how many times I saw one, dragons never ceased to send a chilling thrill down my spine.

“Hey,” I said, “I just wanted to reiterate how goddamn well you did out there today. You saved my ass from being smeared across a mountainside and, more importantly, you caught the woman that is going to help us save the Universal Magic.”

Kazrith looked at me through his rheumy orange eyes. His massive mouth opened to reveal a set of massive teeth, many of which were cracked or blunted.

I held up the Capture Orb.

“Want to rest for a while?” I asked the ancient beast.

Kazrith let out a low roar that blew the hair back from my face and set my jacket to flapping. It was like walking in front of a blast furnace just as someone opened the door. I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if I’d been the recipient of the fastest suntan in history.

“You earned it,” I said, and summoned the massive dragon back into his orb, as the rest of the party behind me looked on in wonder.

When I had refastened the orb to the belt loop of my pants and turned, I saw the Acer looking at me. So was everyone else for that matter, even Lady and Archmage Chillgrave. I had an inkling that Cecilia’s parents were undergoing a rapid change in their views of me.

Shit, I thought, and all it took was saving a damsel in distress off a doomed airship and summoning a dragon. Just another day at the office.

“So, ladies and… gentleman,” I said, remembering that Herb was still downstairs, “what do we do now?”

“Why don’t we head straight back to the Stronghold of the Twin Spirits and tell them the good news?” Alura suggested.

“The partly good news,” I corrected her. “Yeah, we found another Creation Mage, which is fucking amazing, but the bad news is that all the others that we were banking on saving are dead as doornails.”

Alura sighed. “Yes,” she said, “there is that.”

“If it’s all the same to everyone else here,” Archmage Chillgrave said. “I think it would be best if we got the Queen to safety. As soon as the Arcane Council, and that vile abomination, Luctus, finds out that the Queen is missing, all hell will break loose.”

“They’ll release the hounds?” I asked, letting loose a little internal sigh that there was no chance in hell that anyone here was going to pick up the Simpsons reference.

“Hounds?” scoffed Cecilia’s old man. “Hounds will be the least of your problems, young man. No doubt Luctus will have the Arcane Council authorize the use of the werewolf scouting patrols—they call them scouts, but what they really are a bunch of ravening assassins that can only be called off with extreme difficulty. They’ll have magic carpets making sweeps of the surrounding countryside, to make sure that she isn’t being held in the vicinity of the castle. Airships, of course, will be manned and ready to deploy as soon as a whisper comes of where she might be.”

“Yep, I guess that’s usually what happens when a royal runs off without leaving a note, huh?” Acer said.

“I know I’m the odd one out here, so far as noble lineage goes,” I said, “but no one ever used to call the National Guard out when I snuck out through my bedroom window at night. I feel a bit left out.”

“Don’t be,” Queen Hagatha said seriously. “I’m afraid that my absence will only bring about an excess of trouble for all of us. Trouble the likes of which you have never seen.”

“Honestly,” I said, “I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been told there’d be trouble. I’m thinking soon I’ll need a different word, other than trouble, to describe the gargantuan grade shit storms keep raining down.”

“How about ‘scatastrophe’?” came a slurred voice from the top of the stairs that led up from the main deck to the stern deck. “Or ‘poopocalypse’, perhaps?”

“Herb!” I said, beaming at the old man. “How’re you feeling? How’s the making up for lost time thing going for you?”

“Or, perhaps, you might be looking for some sort of shit barometer invention?” the old mage speculated, completely ignoring me.

“Why is he swaying so much?” Alura asked. “We’re out of the worst of the storm.”

“Ah,” I said. “I think this swaying has been brought on by an excess of good spirits.”

“You mean, because the pleasant old fellow is so excited about our vanquishing the foe and ensuring the safety of the Creation Mage known as Bernice Silvertongue?” Lady Chillgrave said.

I frowned. “What? No. I said an excess of good spirits. He’s hammered. Smashed. Off his nut on clown juice. Fuck-eyed. Getting sideways. Or any of the above. Herb is drunk.”

“Is now really the time?” Acer eyed the swaying old man as he sat down on the deck and started stroking his own beard like it was a cat.

“I think this is the perfect time,” I said. “I think we’ve reached the consensus that we’re heading back to the safety of the Stronghold of the Twin Spirits, right?”

There was a chorus of agreement from everyone gathered on the stern deck. Even Herb agreed, although it might actually have been gas.

“All right, then,” I said, “so all we have to do is go through a portal and pop back out in the Spectral Realm, right?”

There was a slightly quieter chorus of assent this time.

“Which actually brings up quite a pertinent point,” I said.

“What’s that?” the Queen of Avalonia asked me.

“How the hell do we get back to the Spectral Realm?” I asked.

Alura must have been able to read the thoughts as they flitted across the surface of my mind, because she grinned, reached out, and squeezed me on the shoulder.

“Don’t fear,” she said, “thankfully, I made inquiries about how we would get back, should we become separated.”

“You did?” I asked.

“Indeed, yes,” Alura said. “Sometimes a woman’s foresight can be an awfully helpful asset to have on hand.”

I leaned in and kissed Alura on the cheek. “You’re a damn marvel, Alura. Thank all the gods that you talked to Reginald Chaosbane before we left.”

“Actually,” Alura said, “it was Barry Chillgrave who gave me this piece of information.”

“Barry Chillgrave? Our Barry Chillgrave?” Lady Chillgrave said.

Alura inclined her head in the affirmative. “That’s right.”

“We have had nothing to do with that pirate for many years,” Archmage Chillgrave said, his tone, which was never what you could call jolly, even frostier than usual. “Seeing him again will be… sorely taxing.”

“You don’t get along?” I asked.

“He sullies the name of Chillgrave with his antics,” Cecilia’s dad said loftily.

“Well, I suppose if anyone’s allowed to, it’d be him, wouldn’t it?” I pointed out in a mild voice. “I mean, it’s his fucking name, isn’t it?”

Archmage Chillgrave’s nostrils flared, but he made no reply.

“Anyway, Barry told me how to get back,” Alura said, surfing over the awkward pause. “All we need to do is activate this just before we’re about to go through any portal.”

She reached into the depths of her ethereal, swirling robe and pulled out a small trinket on a chain—what looked like a golden arrow, looped around a chunk of metallic rock.

“What is it?” I asked.

Alura shrugged. “I’m not sure exactly. Barry didn’t really go into too much of an explanation. You know what he’s like.  All he told me is how to operate it.”

“And?” Acer prompted.

“Apparently, all you need to do is twist this arrow so that it faces down the rock, like this. This, Barry told me, signifies heading to the world below.”

“Bit melodramatic, isn’t it?” I said. “Besides, who knows where the Spectral Realm is in relation to any other realm. It could be above this one, or slightly to the left and inward a bit.”

“I did make that very same observation,” Alura said, giving me a delighted smile that the two of us had spotted the same hole in the notion. “Barry did say that when this cunning device was made, it was a simpler and more superstitious time.”

“Very well,” Queen Hagatha said in her fluting and sunny voice, “if we can use this device to get back through the portal and end up safely in the Spectral Realm, then let us get to it as quick as maybe, yes? Captain Steiner, will you set our course for the portal that we entered this mountainous region from, please.”

“We should see it once we clear this thin cloud bank, Your Majesty,” Captain Steiner replied.

It was just as the captain said. The Royal Airship Venture slid through the ghostly white clouds like a knife into a man’s heart and then remerged into dazzling sunlight.

“Ah, that's better!” Lady Chillgrave said with an earnestness that only now made me realize that she must have been a little edgy during the stormy flight. I supposed that no matter how skilled you might be at magic, you could still be a nervous flyer. “Things are looking like they’re going to settle down into a more comfortable and dignified pattern now.”

Comfortable and dignified…

It was an admirable sentiment.

“Hooray!” said Herb from where he still sat on the deck, stroking his beard.

The ship approached the portal and made its way through. As it did so, Alura twisted the golden arrow so that it faced downward on the metallic rock.

“Stronghold, here we come,” Acer said. “Gods willing, please let my sister and that Thunderstone guy be all fucked out by now.”

We merged out onto the other side of the portal, expecting to see the azure waters of the Spectral Realm’s Caribbean-esque ocean spreading out before us.

What we got, though, was the Castle of Ascension, looming tall and impregnable and far too close to us for comfort.

“What the fuck?” I said, voicing what we must all have been thinking.

“Damn it!” Captain Steiner seethed. “Those bastard sentries that let us through this morning must have been in the Council’s pocket! They must have tipped off Luctus and now he’s rigged the portal so that it only brings crafts and vessels here!”

“What are we going to do?” Queen Hagatha said, looking aghast at the castle before her and taking in the swarming little figures of mages running hither and yon through the grounds.

I summoned my staff to my hand.

“We’re going to do what we do best,” I said. “We’re going to fight our way out of here.”

Chapter 17

The beautiful, manicured grounds of the Castle of Ascendance were thick with uniformed mages running out of the numerous doorways set into miles of castle wall. From our vantage point in the air, I could see them swarming and spreading out, running through the gardens and even into an ornamental maze.

There were a lot of them.

“We need to get down there,” I said.

“What? Why?” Acer said. “Why not just pick them off from up here?”

“Because while we’re up here trying to snipe off individual mages, they’re down there with a great big ship to aim at,” I said.

“Justin is right,” Captain Steiner said curtly. “Tactically, it might seem like the weak option, but we can’t go anywhere with any degree of speed, not while that portal is closed to us. We can lumber around the skies in this vessel, but the Royal Airship Venture was not built for speed.”

“And, being on the ground, will enable us to hopefully hunt out that snake, Luctus,” Queen Hagatha said. “That creature must face justice for his treason.”

“For a while now, I have had men and women that are unquestionably loyal to me keeping their ears to the ground around Manafell. I have no real evidence, which is why I never came to you with it, my Queen, but these loyal soldiers of mine reported that the Arcane Council has a veritable army of loyal supporters within your army.”

Queen Hagatha’s eyes hardened and went very cold. “So, I am betrayed on all sides,” she murmured. “Betrayed utterly by the Arcane Council, while they used me as their pretty figurehead.”

“I guess that takes the guilt out of having to potentially waste some of these pricks down there,” Acer said, with her usual succinct skill.

Captain Steiner nodded. “I suggest we get down there as soon as we are able. I’ll throw over the boarding ropes when we’re a little lower, and we’ll abseil those to the ground. I’ll leave the Venture in a state of hover.”

“Excellent idea,” Alura said.

“Excellent idea?” Cecilia’s mother interjected. “Abseiling down a rope to the ground is an excellent idea? Do you have any idea how much I spend on hand-cream and manicures?”

I tried and failed to keep a snort of amusement in check. “I’m sorry to set back your hand beauty regime, lady Chillgrave. I think you’ll find that being blown to smithereens along with this ship would set it back even further.”

“Save me a chest of coin, though,” I heard Archmage Chillgrave quip quietly to himself.

“Once it is clear that the Queen is back within the castle limits, soldiers loyal to her will come out to help us,” Captain Steiner said. “Although, I fear that those soldiers in the employ of the Arcane Council will still outnumber us by plenty.”

“Don’t forget that Odette is still in the Castle of Ascendance too,” I reminded everyone. “Along with the other dignitaries from the Stronghold.”

“Yes, we will have allies and friends in there,” Queen Hagatha said, “but we have to survive long enough to join with them.”

“I’ll see to the ropes,” Captain Steiner said, hurrying away across the deck.

“And what about the Creation Mage downstairs?” Lady Chillgrave said. “Are we just going to risk losing the one woman we need to help us save the Universal Magic?”

As the Royal Airship Venture dropped toward a deserted patch of the castle grounds, I looked at my companions and smiled.

“As for that,” I said. “I was thinking we might as well remind her that we’re about to fight those she probably hates above all others.”

“You think we can risk releasing her, just on the off chance that she’ll help us?” Archmage Chillgrave asked dubiously. “From what I saw, there’s equal money on her trying to murder all of us along with everyone else down there.”

Down on the deck, Captain Steiner checked the ties on a number of coiled ropes that she had fastened at intervals along the taffrail. The Venture had almost reached the height that would allow us to abseil down and face our enemies.

“You just let me worry about that,” I told Archmage Chillgrave. “You’re right in insinuating that she’s a hot head. Trust me, after fighting her, I now know why it is that we’re so partial to naming storms after women. I’ll go down and talk to her.”

Without another word, I hurried down the stairs and went into the captain’s cabin. Bernice was right where we had left her, out cold.

“Must have hit her with a little more Storm Magic than I thought,” I muttered.

I’d laid out my fair share of enemies with my Paralyzing Zap spell, but I hadn’t ever been there to see how long it took them to wake up. I guessed that as I progressed as a mage, my spells were getting stronger.

I summoned my staff to my hand, pressed it gently against her shoulder, and focused my energy on the blue-skinned woman before me. I then touched her with my Holy Magic spell, Blessed Zephyr.

A gentle breeze sprung up around us, scented with lavender and mint and other healing herbs that I couldn’t even begin to guess at. Might have been oregano in there for all I knew. Bernice’s wild black hair, which was spread out around her on the pillow, moved and writhed like an exotic seaweed. She gave a little groan, and her eyelids flickered. For a second, her mouth widened in a gentle smile.

Then, her eyes snapped open and focused on me. She saw my vector touching her and my look of concentration as I channeled energy into her. She growled and tried to shimmy away from me.

Once I saw that she was awake and full of fire once more, I ceased with the magic and the breeze died.

“Easy,” I said, trying to talk in a calm manner without crossing the line into condescending. “Easy now. I’m not trying to hurt you. On the contrary, that was a healing spell. Easy.”

Bernice wriggled away from me. She didn’t say anything but continued to glare at me. I had no doubt that, if her hands were free, she would have attacked me.

“Look, we don’t have a lot of time here, which is why I used my Blessed Zephyr spell to heal you, rather than let you sleep,” I said. “I’m going to lay a lot of trust at your door in a second and, as a fellow Creation Mage, I’m hoping that you’ll trust me in return. Or, as an adequate second prize, just try not to kill me as soon as I let you free.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed. “You’re going to let me free?” she asked, her voice filled with suspicion.

“That’s the plan, yeah,” I said. “Although, it might be about as safe as grabbing a basilisk by the tail at the moment.”

Bernice studied my face, as if she was trying to pick out any lies in it.

“Why am I here?” she asked me.

I shook my head. “There’s really no time for any of that, I’m afraid. No time for explanations. All I can tell you, Bernice Silvertongue, is that we’re friends. I didn’t drag your ass off that doomed airship just so that I could haul you back to Manafell and lock you up again.”

At the mention of Manafell, Bernice’s face clouded over once again. “The Arcane Council…” she hissed, her voice filled with a venomous animosity. “Those motherfuckers! After all that we tried to help them achieve!”

There was a clatter and a length of thick rope rattled against the window. I held up a hand to cut off Bernice’s many colorful curses that were aimed at the Arcane Council.

“Look,” I said, “I agree that the Arcane Council are a bunch of useless dickbags, but—”

“Useless is right,” Bernice said, cutting across me. “They provide nothing to the world. They are a collection of useless shells, taking up resources, and do not deserve to exist due to their utter lack of functionality.”

I nodded. “Yeah, that’s right. Nicely put.”

Bernice shook her head. “Ah, but I mean to make them have a use for me. I’m going to make them useful as a conduit for my rage and revenge.”

“That,” I said, “is just what I want to hear. I’m going to free you so that you can help us fight them.”

“Fight the Arcane Council? Then, you’re really not in league with them?”

“Hell, no! We were trying to take you somewhere safe, but our portal was hijacked. We’ve been brought back to the Castle of Ascendance, and there’s an army of Arcane Knights out there who are keen on seeing us, and you, reduced to ashes.”

Bernice looked out a porthole. She could only see the sky from where she was laying, but I could tell that she was picturing the castle in her mind. A sort of malevolent glee suffused her face. If ever there was a woman who looked the very definition of a ticking time-bomb, then that woman was Bernice Silvertongue. She looked fucking livid, but strangely happy to be so.

There was another clatter from outside. Looking out of the porthole, I saw the shimmering shape of Alura dropping down the rope dangling down outside.

Bernice frowned. “Was that - was that a Gemstone Elemental?”

“Yeah, that’s Alura, the Princess of the Gemstone Elementals and the daughter of the Prophet King,” I said.

Bernice’s face openly showed her wonder.

“She is a part of your team?” she asked.

I nodded. “She and Queen Hagatha of Avalonia both are.”

Bernice looked astounded at that bit of news. “The Queen of Avalonia is—”

“Look,” I said, snapping my fingers in front of the dreamy, furious face of my fellow Creation Mage, “we have to go right now. I swear, I’ll explain everything to you later, if we survive. Now, I can let you go and hope that you’ll fight with us against the Arcane Council’s forces—I’ve seen you fight, and we could really use your skills—or I’ll leave you here and you’ll miss out on extracting the part of your vengeance. Either way, me and my friends will do nothing to harm you. I’m just asking for your help.”

Bernice regarded me for a long moment. Every particle of my being was fizzing with impatience. I knew, however, that we were at a crucial moment in our acquaintance. It was the moment when she decided whether she could put her faith in what I was telling her.

“I know you’re a Creation Mage,” she said eventually, “having seen you fight. There is that bond between us. More than that, though, I feel as if I can trust you. You have the look of a person who has more than his own interests at heart. You fight for a greater cause, I think.”

I smiled, feeling thankful that she had come to that conclusion on her own.

“Hold out your hands,” I said.

Bernice did so, and I unlocked her shackles.

“Ah, that’s much better,” she said, shaking out her hands and stretching her neck from one side to the other. “Those shackles that inhibit reaching your mana reserves… They are effective, but not natural.”

Bernice got to her feet. Despite her words, I couldn’t help but tense a little. There was a small part of my brain, the mistrustful bastard part, that figured now would be a great opportunity for her to blow me out the window and make a dash for the hills.

Bernice smiled grimly, looking at me like she guessed my thoughts.

“I give you my word I will help you fight the Arcane Council scum,” she said to me earnestly. “After that, I will make no guarantees, but will listen to what you have to say. I feel as if there is much that I have missed out on during my long captivity. First though, point me in the direction of our common enemy!”

“You got it,” I said.

I led the way out to the deck. The rest of the gang had taken up their positions by the ropes that Captain Steiner had tied for us. When they saw Bernice and me come out to join them, there were a few raised eyebrows but no one made any comment. To my surprise, Acer gave the Creation Mage at my side an amiable nod—probably because she recognized a fellow cold-blooded warrior when she saw one.

“Alura has gone already,” Queen Hagatha said.

“I know,” I replied. “Let’s get down there and join her.”

I turned my attention to Bernice. “These people are all your friends. Anyone they fight, you fight. Anyone who tries to do them harm, you have the permission of a couple of bonafide royals to take them out, okay?”

Bernice nodded, although she didn’t really look like she would have bothered about permissions anyway.

I continued. “Make a note of what they look like and try to watch out for anyone who seems like they’re on our side. We’re going to be outnumbered, but there will be a scattering of mages down there who are on our side. Try not to kill them, yeah?”

Bernice nodded again. She looked so eager to get down there and start tearing shit up that I almost felt sorry for the Arcane Council soldiers that were about to make her acquaintance.

Almost. But not quite.

“All right then,” I said. “Let’s fucking do this and make the drastically shortened lives of those traitors down there a living hell.”

We repelled over the sides of the hovering airship like a S.W.A.T. team. Even Lady Chillgrave, with all her reservations about screwing up her perfect nails, zipped down the line she was on like a spider. She may have been dressed up in elegant loose pants tucked into calf skin boots, but she, like most of the other mages I was acquainted with, was a war mage first and foremost.

I was on a rope between Captain Steiner and Queen Hagatha. As we descended, I was struck by a sudden thought.

“What about old Herb?” I yelled at the captain as the pristine emerald lawn rushed up to greet my boots.

“Last I saw of him, he was passed out in a hammock in the crew’s quarters,” Captain Steiner called back. “I left him a brief note explaining how to use the mana cannons if he gets a chance.”

I snorted. “At least if the Arcane Council takes out the Venture, the old guy will go down lit up like a Yuletide tree. There must be worse ways to meet your maker than that.”

Further conversation was curtailed as we landed in the middle of a beautiful garden.

My staff appeared in my hand as soon as I let go of the rope. There were statues and bits of sculpted esoteric art scattered around the garden. It was bordered, on the castle side, by the tall, perfectly trimmed vegetative wall of the maze. From behind that bushy wall came the crash and rustle of a body of people making their way quickly toward us.

“Make it hard for them; scatter and keep moving!” Captain Steiner yelled at us.

To kick things off, I materialized a couple of Arcane Mines and threw them as hard as I could toward the exit of the maze. Muscle alone wouldn’t have carried them as far as I needed them to go, but with a bit of a boost from my Telekinesis spell, I landed them on the money—to either side of the ornate, arching exit.

“Good luck, everybody!” I cried, rolling my shoulders to loosen them up and taking a couple of deep breaths to steel myself. “Remember—each of you is a devil for however long it takes to beat these twatwaffles and get out of here, so make this place hell for a little while!”

Acer bared her teeth as she sprinted off, while Cecilia’s parents embraced one another fiercely before taking cover behind one of the sculpted pieces of art. I caught Bernice’s eye as she turned to look at me.

“Good luck to you, Creation Mage,” she said.

“And to you,” I said. “And call me Justin. If we’re going to end up on a mortuary table by the end of the day, the least we can do is go into this as friends, yeah?”

Bernice allowed a fleeting smile to tug up the corners of her dark blue lips.

“Friends,” she said.

Then, my Arcane Mines detonated as the first of the Arcane Council’s mages charged through the gap in the maze hedge. Great showers of earth erupted outward as my occult explosives went off, the clouds of soil veined with crackling white and blue Storm Magic.

There was a chorus of high-pitched screams as the exit to the maze was shredded and blown to pieces, men and women were thrown through the air like puppets. One dwarf was reduced to a pile of charred bones in an instant. Leaves rained down like confetti, small rocks and chunks of earth pattered down across the lawn, and a selection of severed limbs and charred heads thumped onto the grass where they lay smoking grimly.

“Retribution starts now, arcane dogs!” Bernice Silvertongue screamed. She let forth an undulating warcry that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

My chest filled with fiery battle lust as I prepared to fight for my life and the lives of my friends.

Chapter 18

There was nothing more exhilarating—that you could do with all your clothes on, at least—than charging into a fight to the death.

The smell of hot, sizzling, freshly exploded earth filled my nostrils, along with the slightly icy and heady aroma of Storm Magic.

The Arcane Council’s goons and acolytes charged out of the smoke and carnage screaming battle cries. Lots of them. Lots and lots of them. Some flew, powered by a selection of spells, while there were a pair of centaurs that galloped through the haze of spell smoke armed with a sword in each hand.

“Quite a sight,” I said to myself, watching as the two centaurs charged toward us, easily outstripping the rest of their colleagues.

A beam of piercing light punched out from the shrubbery off to my right and caught one of the centaurs squarely in the abdomen. He screamed and gargled horribly as Alura’s Light Beam spell crackled his skin and melted through his flesh and bone. He looked dead, even as his four horse legs continued to carry him on for a way. Through a great blistered hole in his torso, I could see an elvish woman running along behind him. Then the centaur collapsed and tumbled across the lawn in a tangle of legs.

Spell fire erupted in earnest. There were flashes of multi-colored lights, bangs and crackles and pops, streamers of smoke, the stench of brimstone and roasting coals and fresh-driven snow, and every other conceivable after effect of a cast spell that you can imagine.

I quickly lost track of everyone else. That was the thing about a magical free-for-all; you really had to trust your companions to look after themselves. Every brain cell that you used to worry about all your friends, was one less brain cell that you had spare to try and keep you alive.

Even so, I didn’t worry much. I had seen most of my companions in action and had no fears about them holding their own. Even Queen Hagatha had the determined glint in her eye of someone who knew how to fuck up another mage. So long as she didn’t let compassion or mercy get in the way, she’d be just fine. Compassion and mercy were two things that a good monarch should have by the boatload, but they had no place on a battlefield.

A series of shimmering pink darts ripped low toward me from across the lawn, leaving burn streaks along the grass. I used a localized version of my Metamorphosis spell, so as to limit the amount of mana that the spell consumed, and gave myself armored plates on the backs of my legs and up my back. The pink darts ricocheted off the armor but sent me tumbling forward. I allowed my momentum to turn into a roll, flipped up to my feet, and whirled with my staff pointing at the woman who’d fired the darts at me.

My retaliatory Compulsion hex—a curse that increased a subject’s anger and turned it into a murderous, impartial rage—wrapped her head and fell upon her like soft red spider webs.

Instantly, she screamed a brutal, demonic scream and lashed out at the nearest person, an unfortunate colleague of hers. She jumped on the man’s back, all thoughts of using magic forgotten. He had obviously not been expecting to be attacked from behind, as he went down with a soft sigh of surprise. The woman then proceeded to grab a heavy chunk of blasted earth and bring it down over and over and over again on the back of the man’s skull, until it burst with a wet splat.

I left her to her work, hoping that she’d take out a few more of her own side before someone mowed her down.

There was no doubt that we were outnumbered. That fact was hammered into me with each passing moment, as more and more Arcane Council followers streamed into the Castle of Ascendance’s extensive grounds like a plague of angry, trigger-happy locusts.

We needed more mages on our side, more bodies. I conjured my Frostfire Golem, a golem capable of ice and fire elemental attacks and harder to kill than Keith Richards.

The Frostfire Golem must have weighed about as much as a Range Rover and looked to be carved out of ice shot through with molten blue fire. It caught the eye in no uncertain terms. It looked as dangerous as it probably was.

As the attacks that had been fizzing and flashing toward me were redirected toward my golem, I summoned the Undead Wolverines and a Lightning Skink. The Lightning Skink shot away, making its way into a crowd of oncoming Arcane Council henchmen and tearing into them. The Wolverines did the same, though they moved in a pack, making them a far more daunting prospect for any enemy that they caught out on their own.

I moved through the gardens, ducked a pulsing orange rocket of a Fire Magic incantation that streaked over my head, howling like a banshee, and turned a flowering bush into a raging inferno. I returned fire with a Storm Bolt, blasting the enemy mage backward through a satisfyingly populated glasshouse stuffed to bursting with blue roses.

I pivoted at the sound of running feet coming across a stretch of gravel and terminally perforated two hulking cyclops goons with my Frost Shard spell. Even as they fell dead, impaled by half a dozen three-foot icicles, a young female forest nymph came running around the corner of a hedge and almost bowled straight into me.

I fell to the floor, all tangled up with my adversary as she writhed and thrashed and kicked at me. I took the opportunity to use my Leech spell on her, siphoning mana out of her to refill my dwindling reserves, until she stopped thrashing and collapsed against me. I didn’t kill her—she must have only been a little older than myself, though it was hard to tell with nymphs, and didn’t strike me as particularly evil. I dragged her under the eaves of a bush, her green skin pale as a pistachio, and left her there to think about her life choices.

I moved through the gardens, trying to get closer to the castle but finding myself continuously forced to veer off from the most direct route by massing groups of enemies.

I swapped mage fire with five of the assholes, in the cramped confines of a brickwalled vegetable garden.

I fired everything I in my arsenal at my attackers to hold them at bay and wear them down, while around me innocent marrows were blown to pulpy smithereens and potatoes were sent shooting out of their beds, baked to perfection by Fire Spells.

A tossed a couple of Crystal Magma Bombs toward the group of mages, who defended themselves against the molten blasts with applaudable skill but failed to notice that it was a diversionary tactic. I used my Telekinesis spell to levitate a statue of a pair of rutting fauns above their heads and dropped it, crushing one of them and breaking the legs of another.

With two of their number down, the three remaining mages faltered, and I hit them with the always disconcerting Rain of Toads spell. As the three mages covered their heads and tried to shield themselves from the extremely localized hail of fat amphibians, I blasted my way through a wall of green beans and snow peas with a Fireball that turned one of the trio into a Guy Fawkes. As the others raised their vectors, I switched gears and gave them a taste of Sword Dance.

They didn’t like it, I could tell that. One of them lost his head completely, while the other was divided into three neat segments.

Things were hotting up. I could hear the sounds of battle happening all around me now. As I obliterated a chunky statue of some stern-faced mage and caused the Arcane Council member behind it to run for cover, I couldn’t help but think that maybe—maybe—this time our luck might have run out.

This feeling was exacerbated when, after using my Flame Barrier spell in the shape of a scimitar to cut my way through a hedge, I was confronted by at least twenty Arcane Council minions, all dressed in the livery of the Castle of Ascendance and looking at me like I was the prize in a rather macabre Easter egg hunt. They were standing in front and around a beautiful white marble fountain, which was clearly a centerpiece of the Castle of Ascendance grounds. Behind the small platoon of milling war mages was a set of wide marbles steps, broad enough to drive a couple of Abrams tanks down.

I was still holding the Flame Barrier sword, so I lost no time in hurling it end over end at the female dwarf nearest to me. I had gotten into a good habit of using my Telekinesis spell to help me refine techniques like this—techniques such as throwing swords.

The Telekinesis spell guided the flaming sword exactly where I wanted it to go and gave it an extra bit of juice. It smacked meatily though my dwarven enemy’s face, bursting through the back of her head in a sizzling spray of hot brains, even as she attempted to hit me with a hex.

That sort of brutality gives people pause. Even if there were twenty of enemies, they were still a group of twenty individuals. Twenty individuals more than capable of thanking their lucky stars that the flying, flaming sword hadn’t just skewered their own heads and splattered it to pieces.

You take advantage of every pause, you grasp at every edge, and you see if you can’t turn that edge around and use it for slicing.

Thrusting out my staff, I summoned a lightning storm that rained icicle spears down on my gathered opponents. The Tundra Tempest was a tasty little spell, which I didn’t get to use as often as I would like, due to it being more the kind of magic better suited for discomfiting larger groups of enemies. As the spikes of ice fell from the sky and forced most of my adversaries to summon shields, a helpfully concealing fog came up from the ground to hide me from view.

Of course, it made seeing my enemies difficult too, but I fired a few Blazing Bolts and Fireballs in quick succession and was rewarded with a couple of screams that told me they had hit home.

All good things must come to an end, though. I could feel the drain of the spell on my mana reserves the longer it went on. I released the spell after ten seconds before I crabbed low and sideways until I could just make out my foes through the lifting eldritch mist. I fired a juiced up Storm Bolt at a halfling, who was edging around to see if he could be the hero that took me down.

The spell caught him in the face and flung the little beggar backward, cracking him into the fountain and flipping him bonelessly into the water with a very final splash.

The deluge of magic that poured down on me after that little stunt forced me to adopt my Metamorphosis spell; a handy incantation that basically turned me into a Lesser Gemstone Elemental. I also made the tactical decision to dive over a raised flower bed for extra physical cover, as weaker spells bounced off my impromptu elemental armor and stronger ones cracked it.

“Holy shit, how am I even supposed to stick my nose out to pick any of these fuckers off?” I yelled to myself.

I hunkered down a little closer to the ground as something exploded in a gout of green and purple flame on the other side of the flower-covered bank. Soil and petunia petals fell around me, small rocks pinging off my armor that covered me like an exoskeleton.

I was about to risk another glance over the bank when a creature leapt over the top of it. I was honest enough to admit that my knowledge of magical creatures, while getting better, was still hardly encyclopedic. It wasn’t as if I’d had any Care of Magical Creatures lessons to go to, was it? But even I, with my limited knowledge, could recognize a Naga when it came pouncing down on me.

It was the snake’s head on the human body that gave it away.

Even as I noted this physical quirk, I also realized that this Naga was not a beast in the employ of the Arcane Council—it was a magically conjured entity, like my Lightning Skink. There was a greasy black sheen to it, reminiscent of used engine oil, which told me it had been summoned from the world of magic.

As the Naga landed, I swept its legs out from under it with my staff. Magical beings, I had found, rarely expected mages to come at them with physical blows and so proved to be the case with this one. It went down, hissing like a cat in a sack. I shoved the end of my staff into its mouth to stop it biting down on anything inconvenient, like my leg, and then blasted its head apart by conjuring a Blazing Bolt.

The Naga vanished in a burst of greasy black smoke.

I pointed my staff in the direction of the enemy crowd and sent another Blazing Bolt in their direction.

Things had looked better, that much was certain. I was outnumbered and my mana was running low, especially with keeping my Gemstone Elemental armor. Not wanting to be overrun like a complete idiot and bludgeoned to death by overzealous Arcane Council sycophants, I materialized a few of my always-helpful Crystal Magma Bombs and lobbed them over my head.

They went off in a succession of detonations. Judging by the sprinkling of white powered stone that I was dusted with a few seconds later, I’d managed to land one in the fountain itself.

That’s too bad, I thought.

Some screams went up them, and there was the sound of frantic hurrying.

What the fuck? That doesn’t sound like the results of Crystal Magma Bombs…

Anyone who managed to escape a close explosion with one of the handy little grenade devices was usually in too many small, bloody pieces, or had been burned away to a formless blob, to cause too much trouble.

Curiosity winning out over prudence, I stuck my head above the line of the flowerbed-cum-bunker I was taking cover behind.

I was just in time to bear witness to the arrival of Bernice Silvertongue.

And what an arrival it was.

Bernice was going nuts. She was, in my eyes at least, a god-tier powered end game MMO character. Everyone—and by everyone I meant the host of enemies that was arrayed against her—was clearly in awe of Bernice’s power and the spells she had at her disposal.

She rushed in, driven by a howling magical gale that must have been an epic Storm Magic spell, flying through the air like a harrier hawk. The loose wrappings of her strange, almost Egyptian mummy-like outfit flapped in the wake of her speed.

On her first fly-by—the one that had started all the commotion—she had conjured a sinkhole in the middle of a cluster of Arcane Council goons, and they had been sucked down into the earth before the sinkhole had reverted back to solid ground. How did I know this? Because a couple of arms and what looked to be someone’s ass were poking out of the now solid ground. As I watched, one of the arms twitched feebly.

Buried alive… I thought.

On her next pass, my fellow Creation Mage simply swooped in and grabbed two of the stunned mages by the back of their robes and pulled them up into the air. The two mages shrieked as Bernice flung them away, flipping out of sight over the nearest twenty-foot hedges that I had so recently cut my way through.

Then to my everlasting delight, she came down out of the air in the perfect superhero landing.

BOOM!

Textbook. One knee to the floor, with fists on either side of her crouched leg and her head down. An expanding ring of dirt was kicked up from the point she landed, and one mage who had been standing too close was flung off his feet by a shockwave. He was impaled on a fatally pointy torch sconce nearby.

I almost started applauding right there and then.

What made that so much more awesome and sexy was that this woman had no idea who Superman was. She’d never seen a Marvel or DC movie in her life. That had been an organic landing.

“Uh oh, did I just fall in love,” I said out loud.

“Uhhh, what?” said a drenched Arcane Council mage, who was standing not ten feet away from me in the middle of the fountain and watching the show unfold.

I pointed my staff at the water of the fountain and fired a Paralyzing Zap into it. As the electrified Storm Magic ran through the water, the man jerked and twitched and then fell backward with a splash. He let out a soft groan and steamed gently.

There was a long pause. A pause that opened up a void between Bernice Silvertongue and the dozen or so Arcane Council goons that surrounded her. That void filled with unspoken questions. Questions like, “Who the fuck is she?” and “Where did she come from?” and “Am I going to die in the next fifteen seconds?” and “Why didn’t I call in sick this morning?”

Then Bernice looked up.

And she smiled.

I was almost certain that I heard someone gulp.

I definitely made out some savvy bastard say, “Dip me in duck shit, we’re in fuckin’ trouble…”

And Bernice unleashed.

It was like a tornado grounded itself in the square, going from zero to a hundred in the space of time it might have taken someone to suck in the breath they needed to start screaming.

I raised my staff and fired off a cursory Frost Shards spell, but my Frost Magic was blown off course and shattered against the base of the fountain, dragged out of line by the epic power of Bernice’s Wind Magic spell. A fragment of one of the obliterated icicles embedded itself in the thigh of a woman who was so ugly that I hoped for her sake that she was half-orc or something. She didn’t seem to notice, having more on her mind than the ice in her leg—or through her mind, I guess would’ve been more accurate, when a lump of spinning stone took off the top of her skull.

A random lightning bolt, turquoise in color, zapped out of the maelstrom and hit a gay-skinned dude in the legs. They crumbled under him like they’d been turned to ash.

One by one, sometimes two by two, Bernice handled the surrounding enemies with the same efficiency and lack of mercy as a pest-controller spraying the roaches. Every now and again, one of the desperate Arcane Council goons would fire a spell at her, but it didn’t matter if it was Fire, Death, Earth, Holy, Air, or any of the other strains of Magic—she blocked, cancelled out, or reversed them all.

Men and women were torn apart wholesale. It was very modern in that respect—Bernice did not discriminate based on gender. Each was equally fucked as the other. Some were dismembered with exploding incantations, others incinerated so that only a shadow of where they had stood remained. One guy was swallowed up by acidic quicksand.

Then, as quickly as the incredible display of magical destruction began, it ended. The hurricane force wind died. The psychedelic lightning faded.

Although I could still make out the sound of fighting coming from different corners of the grand castle gardens, in the courtyard I shared with Bernice was relative peace.

“Could’ve gone for something a little more terrifying and impressive, couldn’t you?” I asked.

My fellow Creation Mage opened her mouth to reply, then her face went suddenly blank, and she collapsed in a heap.

“Silvertongue!” I yelled.

My eye caught a slight movement, and I saw that the guy who’d had his legs turned to charcoal wasn’t quite dead just yet. He had a dagger, which I assumed to be his vector, pointing at where Bernice had been standing.

I hit him with a little Blazing Bolt and blew a hole in his chest. Blood sprayed across the grass.

I hurried over to Bernice and checked her pulse. She had one, which was something, but it was irregular. I had no idea what spell the Arcane Council douche had used on her, but it had knocked Bernice the fuck out without killing her.

Still, that wasn’t too much comfort. Not when I heard the rush of many booted feet making their way toward me along the many pathways of the elaborate gingerbread gardens.

“Shit, I just had to go and jinx it, didn’t I?” I said to myself.

Settling my staff a little more comfortably in my hand, I dashed down the nearest path. I was hoping that I’d be able to draw the enemy away from Bernice and meet up with some of the others so that we could come back and get her to safety.

I dinked through a beautiful smelling herb garden and smoked a lurking Arcane Council henchman with my staff so hard under his chin that he performed a half backflip before crumpling to the floor in a heap.

I was going to face whatever the hell the Arcane Council and that fucker Luctus had in store for me.

Chapter 19

My immediate circle of concern had shrunk down until it was double the length of the end of my staff. There was thaumaturgical smoke of all different shades and thicknesses wafting over the enormous castle gardens. Explosions ripped the air every few seconds.

There were also sounds that had no place within either a stately garden or the middle of a close-quarters wizarding battle. Loud slurping noises that reminded me of getting the last dregs out of a drink in a movie theatre. Subtle whispered threats that shot past my head as a spell fired out of the smoke and confusion by an unseen foe narrowly missed my face. The sharp zipping noises from somewhere off in the distance that were immediately followed by great, deep concussive clangs.

While trying to find any single one of the crew of the Royal Airship Venture, I ended up in what a hunter might’ve called a turkey shoot position, a soldier might’ve called a killbox, but what I thought of simply as a fucking goat rodeo.

I was herded into the giant hedge maze. Arcane Council mages swarmed all over me, hard on my six as well as occasionally floating up into the air to rain magic down on me from above the maze.

Sure, I could have used my Flame Flight to get out of that particular clusterfuck, but there was no real knowing where the hell I’d end up dropping into. At least in the maze, I just had to keep my eyes on a couple of directions at once; behind and above. No one was going to hit me from the side and running into an enemy would have just been sheer bad luck.

I was hit from the side about fifteen seconds after these comforting thoughts had lulled my mind into a false sense of security.

Surrounding me, and looking surprised with this outcome, were more than a dozen of the Arcane Council’s robed minions.

For a few awkward seconds, we all just looked at one another.

How they had all come to be there, I had no idea. It might have been a tactical move, or they might have all just found themselves pelting in here by chance as I had.

All that was, of course, semantics. After all, it didn’t really matter how you found yourself in the junkyard, the most pertinent fact was that you were now sitting on your ass and staring eye to eye with a pack of ravenous Dobermans.

“Do we get a prize?” I asked.

An elf who’d had half his long hair singed off and clearly didn’t understand sarcasm, said “A prize? A prize?”

“He’s yanking your chain, Levis, you half-wit,” said one of the other mages. “Making some wisecracks before we light his ass up and hand him over to Luctus in a dustpan.”

“I don’t like the sound of that,” I said. “Not that I have anything against dustpans, but that Luctus guy is a fucking cocklobster.”

Silence greeted this, but it was broken by Levis the elf tittering to himself and saying, “Holy mackerel, he called a Luctus a - a - a cocklobster! What’s a cocklobster?”

“You know what? I like you, Levis,” I said. “So, I’m going to make a concerted effort not to kill you in a second.”

Levis, with his half-charred weave, looked around at the others and beamed like an idiot. “You hear that?” he said. “He said he’s not going to k—”

The other half of Levis’ head, along with the rest of his body and the two Arcane Council henchmen on either side of him, was incinerated in a burst of eldritch green flame.

“That wasn’t me,” I said apologetically to the heap of ash that had been the moronic elf.

There was a rending shriek from above us, and a shadow swept over the center of the maze. There was another burst of the occult greenish-blue flame. A mage, who had been flying using a Wind Magic spell, fell screaming from the heavens. He thumped into the lawn not ten paces from me, twitched a few times, and lay still.

A giant, fire-breathing shadow rarely fails to draw the attention of a crowd, even one that was gazing at me with such eager and anticipatory bloodshed in their eyes. The collection of Arcane Council goons looked skyward as one. I don’t mind telling you I took the opportunity to lay a few of them out and level the playing field a little. Admittedly, I did use Paralyzing Zap, as I felt too guilty about killing them when they were so obviously engrossed in shitting their pants, but the end result was more or less the same: they were out of the fight.

Odette Scaleblade soared over the maze, riding on the back of her Bone Dragon—a skeletal undead beast that didn’t let the fact that it had no lungs or stomach get in the way of broiling anyone unlucky enough to fall into its crosshairs. What a sight that was, seeing an undead dragon appear and realizing that it was being ridden by one of your Death Mage pals.

“Holy shit, am I glad to see a familiar face,” I muttered under my breath.

I raised my staff and roared out an instinctive, wordless warcry at seeing her—it was one of those moments where it would have been impossible not to let out some ululation. It not only jacked me up, that cry, but it also helpfully captured Odette’s attention and trained her gaze down on me.

To my delight, she raised her bone spear and returned the salute I was making with my own staff. She turned her dragon and, much to the dismay of the mages surrounding me, swept low over the maze once again and let her Bone Dragon really show them what it was made of.

The dragon’s tail whipped across and hit a nymph with such force that the sound of her bones breaking was like a gunshot. She was flung thirty feet and smashed clean through the thick hedge of the maze.

The dragon opened its massive, tooth-filled maw and let loose another burst of flame that raked across the center of the maze like a very accurate and devastating green napalm strike. Men and women of all races were set alight in a diabolically ruthless fashion. They didn’t suffer long as the flesh sloughed off their bones and they crumpled into formless piles within seconds.

I pressed myself back against the hedge as far as I could, while Odette Scaleblade and her giant summoned pet worked their terrible magic on our foes. A couple of the braver Arcane Council goons were firing bolts of red energy up at Odette, but I took them out with pinpoint accurate Storm Bolts to the temple, which floored them with the efficacy of a .405 Winchester round.

I was just eyeing up the last resolute fighter when the dragon banked with the dexterity of a goshawk and snatched the man up in its claws. The hapless mage screamed once, before the dragon ducked its head and crushed the man’s cranium in its jaws like a creme egg. A large portion of brain splatted to the floor not far from me, and a fragment of it hit my boots and stuck there.

I sighed through my nose and looked around at the destruction. There were bodies everywhere. Most of the hedges had been completely incinerated, leaving only black stubs of smoldering vegetation.

I scraped the brain matter off my boot with the toe of my other one.

“Justin, head this way, and I’ll cover you from the air!” Odette called down to me as her Bone Dragon belched green flames again. A chorus of screams were emitted from off stage.

There was no point asking her what lay that way. I couldn’t see anything with all the spells and smoke and fire in the air.

I did as directed, blasting part of the maze out of the way with a Fireball to make my passage a little more direct and easy. As I made my way with slightly more care and slightly less haste through a tunnel of orchids, I encountered a pair of bad guys. They looked like a couple of lads who were doing their very best at keeping their heads down so that they could pop out later once the dust had settled.

“You!” I roared. “Get the fuck out of here! In the name of Queen Hagatha!”

I hadn’t been expecting it to work, but the duo pelted down the short verdant tunnel and out into the estate beyond. I heard them scream. There was a brief flash of green fire, and the screaming stopped.

“Nothing like a dragon to even the scores a little,” I said grimly.

I unexpectedly ran into Acer Blade outside the grotto. She was grappling with a large man who, when he turned my way a little, I saw was not actually a man but a minotaur. He was a big son of a bitch, who looked like he’d eat just about anything that couldn’t eat him first. He had a few knife wounds across his barrel-sized chest but was pressing Acer hard toward a corner that she’d find tricky to get out of.

“Yo, Bushwacker!” I yelled.

The minotaur turned its bloodshot eyes on me and gave a horse roar. Acer’s hand was suddenly filled with a knife the likes of which Freddy Kruger would have been proud, and she plunged it into the minotaur’s shoulder.

The blade might have been a stick of celery for all the notice the minotaur mage paid it. He lashed out with a hoof and caught Acer in the guts and sent her staggering backward, wheezing and grimacing.

The Bone Dragon roared overhead, but the minotaur was clearly a being of fixed and determined focus, and he didn’t so much as glance upward. He was right not to worry just then. It wasn’t as if Odette could utilize the great undead beast, not with Acer and myself and this big bastard scrapping it out in such close proximity. Barbecue him, and we all barbecued.

No, it was me and him. Me and this minotaur that was so bulky he looked like he’d have to sit down in shifts.

I almost fell into the trap of forgetting that the guy was a minotaur second and a mage first. The razor-tipped horns protruding out of his brutish forehead and whisking to and fro past my face captured most of my attention. It was only at the last minute that I saw him raise a hammer, which must have been his vector, and point it at me.

“Shit!” I said, and I saw the minotaur’s muzzle twitch with amusement.

A burst of Flame Flight sent me shooting into the air like a rocket on the Fourth of July. The minotaur’s spell sizzled under me, pulsating waves of expanding blue energy boring into the stone wall behind me and chewing it with the ease and violence of a champion bucking bull pawing at the ground.

I let gravity take me, falling earthward but adjusting my flight so that I landed on the minotaur mage’s shoulders.

“Giddyup,” I said, and I leaned forward and grasped the bull, not by the horns, but by his muscular forearms. Then, I invoked my Crystalize spell and encapsulated my enemy’s arms in translucent crystal all the way up to the shoulders.

The minotaur’s suddenly massively heavy arms pulled it off balance and thudded into the turf. It bellowed, as only a bull-headed man can, and bucked and thrashed.

But not for long.

You can’t go kicking chicks in the stomach and expect to get away with it. Especially not a Metal Mage with proud, royal blood running through her veins. Especially not Acer Blade.

Acer’s eye shone with a pale light, and a glowing silver hatchet materialized in midair, then dropped with a meaty thwack onto the base of the minotaur’s neck. The embedded blade expanded in width so that the minotaur’s muscular neck and throat was torn apart laterally in a spray of deep, rich blood.

With one last groan, the minotaur’s head fell off its tattered stump of neck and hit the ground.

“Right, that was fucking violent and quite intimidating, but we should get moving,” I said. “There are bound to be some more Arcane dimwits, who think that fighting us is a good idea, but let’s get out of here.”

“Come on!” Odette called from above me. “Let’s move! The others are already by your ship!”

“Why?” I asked. “Anywhere we go, the council will follow us.”

“We have the means to get back to the Stronghold now. I think you’ll be able to slip out of ‘ere now, so long as you move like lightning.”

We followed Odette’s advice and came along behind and underneath her, while she cleared the road with her Bone Dragon’s lethal fiery breath and its death-dealing tail.

Before long, and with only very brief stops in which we killed or incapacitated Arcane Council mages, we were back under our floating ship, the Royal Airship Venture.

When we turned at bay and waited for Archmage Chillgrave to throw down a rope ladder, I slammed my staff into the ground and used my Sword Dance spell to cut down a flight of glowing and pulsing orange discs that looked intent on decapitating Acer and me. A series of Frost Shards fired at the offending adversary that had tried her luck sent her diving into cover.

The end of the rope ladder hit the deck, and I urged Acer to scramble up it while I covered her. This she did with no backchat, which I appreciated immensely. Nothing more annoying, in my mind, than having two warriors who are standing on the brink of rescue letting their manners get in the way.

As she scuttled like a spider up the rope ladder, I fired a couple of Blazing Bolts at one or two other enemy mages to keep them at bay. As I did so, catching one female halfling who was too slow at dodging out of sight and sending her cartwheeling into the branches of an ancient apple tree that then promptly combusted, I saw that there was another ship on the other side of the extensive landscaped ground.

“Who’s that?” I called up to the deck of the Royal Airship Venture.

“Admiral Galeflint and Captain Chillgrave, aboard The Hellbringer, apparently,” Lady Chillgrave called back.

“Fucking go you good thing! Give ‘em hell you two!” I said.

I realized then that the reason that we hadn’t been overrun long ago was that the other rebel ship had attacked and divided the Arcane Council forces.

“Are we all aboard?” I yelled up at the Venture.

“Yes!” cried Captain Steiner. “Get your butt up here, Mauler!”

Even as she spoke the words, I noticed that we had already started moving and the ground was dwindling slowly in size. We were off.

Using my Tundra Tempest spell to cover my retreat while I climbed, I began scaling the ladder—not the easiest when the wind was gusting, the airship above me was moving, and lucky potshot spells from down below were very nearly grazing my ass.

Alura and Queen Hagatha were peering over the taffrail at me, urging me on. Their words, though, if they were saying anything, were lost in the wind.

“When I had only a third of the ladder to go, I paused and yelled, “Is Bernice, okay? She took a knock down there and looked pretty out of it.”

The faces of the two women froze. They exchanged aghast looks.

“Oh, you’re fucking kidding me?” I said. “Misplaced her like a fucking cellphone on top of a car roof?”

The girls were looking down at me, clearly completely stricken at what we had all done.

I cursed under my breath, looking down at the ground and then across at the other ship that we were now on a level with, though still divided by miles of empty air.

I was still staring at Isobel Galeflint’s ship, as it moved off and started heading toward us. Its mana cannons were flashing, and explosions of blue light erupted on the ground where the manaballs struck. I saw a couple of tiny stick figures mages travel through the air, buffeted skyward by the explosive magical rounds. I was still staring at them when another ship came into view from around the looming side of the castle.

“Fuck!” I yelled, pointing with one hand while I clutched the swaying ladder with the other. “Enemy warship in pursuit!”

“Damn it!” came the fervent voice of Odette Scaleblade from up above as she joined Alura and Queen Hagatha at the rail. “And I’m too low on mana to damn well summon another Bone Dragon!”

In an instant, my mission, if I chose to accept it—which I would, obviously—was laid clear out in front of my waking eyes.

I looked up at Alura, Odette, and Queen Hagatha.

Odette caught me looking. Must have caught the gleam of resolution settling in my eye.

“What’re you going to do, Justin?” she cried out.

“Where are these two ships heading?” I asked back.

Odette pointed at a swirling smudge of color a few miles distant.

A portal.

“Chaosbane had some mages hack a portal out of the ether,” she said, raising her voice to compete with the rising wind.

I didn’t need to ask what Chaosbane that had been. There was only one mage I knew whose reputation backed up a piece of magic that had him ripping through dimensions.

Reginald.

I pointed at the enemy ship that was in close pursuit of Isobel’s vessel.

“I need to buy you guys a little time and retrieve our lost friend, Bernice,” I said. “And I think I know how. Is everyone else who was invited to the castle on board The Hellbringer?”

Odette nodded.

“Are you sure?” I asked, trying to keep the dubiousness in my tone to the bare minimum.

“I saw all the others board Isobel’s ship before I summoned my dragon,” Odette yelled. “Justin, are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

I smiled up at her, feeling that beautiful reckless simplicity flowing through my veins; the indescribable feeling I got when there was a single, dangerous path that needed to be trod, and there was no other way to interpret what had to be done.

Simplicity was bliss when it came to million to one chances.

“Know what I’m doing? Not yet, but it’ll come to me. I’ll be right back.”

I let go of the ladder and tumbled toward the ground.

Chapter 20

For the second time that day, I plummeted through the air at terminal velocity, the ground heading toward me at an incredible rate. Spells flung by mages on the ground zipped past my free-falling form like anti-aircraft flak. I narrowed my eyes against the onrushing wind and tried to steer myself through the air, getting as close to the ground as I dared.

When I deemed it right, I activated the Capture Orb at my belt. Once more, I felt the reassuring warm mass of the Amber Dragon under me.

“Kazrith, can you feel where I’m aiming for?” I yelled over the wind as the Amber Dragon weaved through the air, avoiding some spell fire while other incantations rebounded from his scaled hide.

The dragon rumbled in his chest, telling me he did.

“All right, well let’s get there pronto, grab the dark-haired woman who is hopefully still there, and get the hell gone, okay?”

Another rumble. Another yes.

“Go!”

Kazrith cruised as quickly as he could across the rolling acreage of the gardens. He sprayed a handful of Arcane Council mages with the viscous amber liquid that his kind used as a weapon instead of fire, but he did not deviate from the quickest route leading to our prize. The gardens were a smoking wasteland now. Parts of it were on fire, while there were massive trenches and blackened craters pockmarking the once immaculate lawn. It was also scattered with corpses.

“Someone’s got their work cut out for them in the morning,” I said.

When we reached the fountain, Kazrith landed. Dragons aren’t great at hovering, with them being the size they are, but Kazrith busied himself by roaring so loudly that some of the castle windows shattered and mushing one unfortunate halfling into jelly under his huge foot.

I dismounted from the Amber Dragon’s back and searched through the bodies that lay there. It was a grim task, but it had to be done. There were more there than when I had left the area. I figured another wave of the battle must have passed over it after I had moved on.

To my dismay, there were a few faces there that I recognized; men and women who had been sitting around at the Stronghold of the Twin Spirits.

“The first casualties of our rebel cause,” I muttered, my hands bunching into fists at my side.

I rolled over the faceless, legless corpse of an Arcane Council minion, and there was Bernice. She was still breathing, and the pulse in her neck felt like it had strengthened.

“Okay, let’s get the fuck out of here,” I said as the sound of yelling reached my ears.

There were more of Arcane Council goons heading this way. Thinking quick, I used my Transmogrify Allies spell for the first time. I cast it over Bernice, and her semi-conscious body transformed into that of a Gemstone Elemental. She became glittering like a diamond, and looked not unlike Alura but a whole lot shinier. I figured that, should there be spells coming our way, this would at least protect Bernice while she was unable to cast defensive spells of her own.

Kazrith cradled the woman in his massive claws while I mounted his back again. With a few beats of his enormous wings, the wind of which bowled over the mages that had just then converged on our position, he took flight once more. He casually lashed his tail down, shattering the remnants of the ornate fountain and sending a handful of our foes flying and cartwheeling away with limbs and heads broken.

“Nice exfil, buddy!” I yelled, using one of the only bits of army jargon I knew and slapping Kazrith on the neck. “Now, let’s hightail her to safety and then we can get on with dealing with that enemy vessel.”

Kazrith was a dragon of few words, but his subterranean growl was as much of a yes as I needed. Guided by my mind, the huge dragon climbed into the sky and headed back around to draw a bead on the retreating stern of the Royal Airship Venture.

Kazrith’s wings, each as big as the sails of a thirty-foot yacht, sent echoing booms as they propelled us through the air and sent the smokes of the battlefield rolling away from us. The old Amber Dragon gained on the Queen’s royal airship as it climbed smoothly through the sky, heading toward the portal that was still some miles away.

“Kazrith, this needs to be a smooth bit of work,” I said. “I know it’d be the cherry on the cake if we were to drop Bernice and she missed the ship, but let’s try and not let that happen, huh? I doubt she’d survive that fall even as a Gemstone Elemental.”

The dragon snorted a fine steam of amber droplets that were whipped away from us by the wind.

“I know you’ve got experience,” I said, “but it’s just been one of those days, okay? The best thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging, but in the last hour or so, I feel like we’ve all been doing our best impressions of walking shovels.”

Kazrith flapped his wings a couple of times so that we were now coming in above the Venture. As we closed, I saw figures scurrying around the deck.

“Now, watch out for the sails,” I warned.

Kazrith didn’t answer. I figured the old dragon was concentrating hard. I hoped it was because he didn’t want to be the one to drop the ball—or the Creation Mage—at this crucial juncture and less not he couldn’t see anything out of his rheumy orange eyes.

We swept toward the airship, the Amber Dragon dampening his speed as much as he could without falling out of the sky. The stern of the vessel afforded him the biggest open stretch of deck, while being furthest from any sails or rigging, and this is where he lined himself up.

With a final dip that sent my stomach lurching up into my throat, the Amber Dragon descended and then flapped his wings furiously to gain altitude. I twisted in my seat, ready to jump e off the dragon’s back if I saw the unconscious body of Bernice Silvertongue hurtling toward the earth.

There she lay, right smack dab in the middle of the poop deck, arms and legs spread eagle. She glittered and shimmered in her Gemstone Elemental form. She was joined by a second shimmering form: Alura. The Gemstone Princess was joined by Queen Hagatha. Captain Steiner was already back at the helm and yelling something at the tiny, staggering form of Herbert Crumm.

A weight dropped from my shoulders, and I patted the Amber Dragon’s scaly neck with heartfelt thanks.

I set my jaw and fixed my gaze upon the enemy ship that was slowly reeling in Isobel Galeflint’s ghostly pirate airship, The Hellbringer. However much sail power the Arcane Council’s ship was packing under its… deck, it looked to be slightly more powerful than The Hellbringer and was inexorably gaining on it.

As we banked and passed back along the port side of the Royal Airship Venture, I heard Acer, Queen Hagatha, and even Lady and Archmage Chillgrave call out a series of good lucks to me.

I waved, and then turned back to the task at hand.

“Kazrith,” I said, “let’s buy these guys some time.”

The Amber Dragon roared his pleasure, picking up on the destructive vibe that I was sending out toward the enemy ship. Lashing his tail from side to side, Kazrith surged off toward our adversary.

I was starting to think this would be done in a matter of seconds, but then my hopes were dashed when another Arcane Council vessel appeared. This airship was even greater in size than The Hellbringer, with sails dyed a poisonous yellow.

“Luctus,” I said to myself. Knowing that I spoke the truth even as the word came out of my mouth, tasting like stale vomit.

A couple of mana-blue flames flared suddenly from the rear of the ship, and I saw the vessel start moving forward at a far greater speed than any of the others.

“He’s got a fucking jet-powered airship?” I groaned. “Of course the bastard does.”

I looked up at the pale blue sky. It was almost midday. Apart from the smoke drifting up from the burning gardens of the Castle of Ascendance below and behind us, it looked like it was going to be one hell of a beautiful day.

A hell of a beautiful day for a battle to the death some thousand feet above the ground.

Kazrith and I streaked past the bow of The Hellbringer. I caught a fleeting glimpse of Isobel Galeflint standing at the helm, her bright crimson hair flying in the wind and the gold braid on her sexy admiral’s jacket catching the light of the sun. Even as a ghost, she was stunning. Barry Chillgrave was at her right hand, issuing orders to the crew below him. As the Amber Dragon and I rushed past them, Barry threw up his ghostly tricorn hat and yelled something that I couldn’t make out.

Then they were gone, relegated to our metaphorical rearview mirror. I was focused one hundred percent on the first of the enemy vessels looming large in front of us.

“Speed is the watchword for the day,” I said to Kazrith. “Hit ‘em and move onto the next. They have mana cannons, and we don’t want to get smoked by one of those. I’ve seen what they can do, and I’ll not risk your life unnecessarily, got it?”

The dragon said nothing, but I got the sense that we were of one mind.

“Okay then,” I said, “let’s light them up, big guy.”

As we approached, I could see the crew of the Arcane Council ship milling around the deck like beetles trapped under a jar. I didn’t blame them for looking collectively nervous. They were on board a giant wooden ship, floating hundreds and hundreds of feet in the air and climbing.

And there was a dragon heading their way. A dragon that was not on their side.

My sphincter would have been tightening up nicely if I’d been in their position too.

Kazrith tucked his wings more tightly against his body as we approached. From where I sat between the dragoon’s great shoulders, I had a great view of the mouths of the mana cannons as they swiveled slowly to track us.

“Come on, buddy, come on,” I urged the Amber Dragon.

Kazrith, showing his cunning and guile, drifted left and then banked sharply right just as the first cannons let rip. Manaballs, trailing a misty blue vapor, streaked past us, missing by a county mile.

There was much screaming and jabbering on deck as the mana cannons were swung the opposite way, but by then it was too late. Kazrith had passed by the starboard side and let loose with a burst of glutinous liquid amber across the deck.

Men and women screamed as they were incased and trapped in the viscous goo. Some of them were totally covered, turned into humanoid versions of the mosquito in Jurassic Park. Some of the amber spray hit the lower parts of one of the sails, weighing it down so that it sagged.

And then we had passed on by. We were now heading toward the ship that I just knew, deep in my stomach, was carrying that foul, shadow-swathed motherfucker, Luctus.

This time, the mana cannons started firing much earlier. Balls of sizzling blue-green magic flashed past us as Kazrith banked and swerved. He roared out a challenge as we swooped in, dropping down high so that we passed the deck and swept underneath it.

“Go for the rudder if you can, Kazrith!” I suggested as manaballs whizzed by, so close that I could feel the raw magical heat of their passing.

Kazrith did as I suggested, rising to spray the rear of the vessel with amber. His first shot punched into the back of the captain’s cabin, caving in the windows and splintering the wood with the heavy deluge of liquid amber.

However, this ship had stern cannons, quick things that didn’t pack as much of a punch but could be maneuvered far more swiftly.

“Pull up!” I yelled as I saw the mouths of the twin cannons swivel to follow us.

Kazrith tried some evasive maneuvers, but I used my Telekinesis spell to strike one of the canons so that it fired well wide. The other manaball struck the Amber Dragon on the base of the tail, and he let out a roar of discomfort as we climbed out of range.

As we swept up and around the vessel, I peered down on the deck and saw Luctus striding up the stairs that led to the helm. His Sith lord style was still very much in evidence, his cloak swirling around him like black cloud that threatened rain.

I raised my staff and fired a Storm Bolt down at him. The mage waved a lazy hand, without even having to look. The spell veered off course and ripped out a chunk of the taffrail, shattering it in a burst of lightning.

A squad of mages armed with mana rifles fired up at Kazrith and me. The mana rounds bounced harmlessly off the dragon’s scaled armor as we flew by, making sounds like china plates being hit with a metal spoon as they rebounded off his ancient hide.

In retaliation, I sent down a few Fireballs, which hit the deck and created a few small blazes. This distracted some of the Arcane Knights, who dropped their rifles and ran to put out the fires.

And so Kazrith and I settled into a series of swooping attacks, flying back and forth between the two enemy ships. We concentrated most of our energies on attacking the lead airship, the one closest to Isobel Galeflint’s Hellbringer. Gradually, as the lead ship was forced to deal with our attacks and was weighed down more and more by Kazrith’s crystalizing amber, Isobel was able to lengthen the gap between them.

Below us, the outskirts of the capital of Avalonia, Manafell, slipped by and were replaced by the ordered fields and rolling green of the countryside. Swathes of houses started being replaced by more isolated cottages and, beyond them, were the larger spreads of farms.

After I sent my trio of Undead Wolverines ravening across the deck of the lead ship, the Amber Dragon cut back down toward Luctus’ vessel. Leaving the bastards on the vessel in front to deal with the mad eldritch creatures, Kazrith fell like a hawk toward Luctus’ airship, which looked like it intended to head off the Venture.

“We need to disable it, Kazrith,” I said. “We do that, and the Venture can make it to the portal. The Hellbringer should be okay, but we need to take out those flaming things at the back of the ship, or the rudder.”

Kazrith roared and nodded his great head once.

Down we flashed once more, like a glowing orange semi-trailer divebombing through the air.

Kazrith let loose with another splashing gout of liquid amber. He caught a few mages who were too slow in raising their vectors. They were encased in the mucilaginous spray and sent tumbling off the ship and into the void of fresh air.

Spells fired out from the mages on deck, and I blocked a few of them with a hastily erected Flame Barrier. My Fire Spell braved the brunt of enemy magic for a few hits, and then burst into liquid flame and disappeared when it was struck by a manaball.

More manaballs ripped past us, but Kazrith was resolute. His wing joints pivoted as he made minute adjustments in mid-flight so that we were always just ahead of the mana cannon fire.

I fired Frost Shards across the deck in a sweeping spray, the two-foot-long icicles burying themselves in one mage’s torso so that he was pinned to the main mast by a length of colon, vomiting up blood as he coughed out his ghost. The rest of the Frost Shards exploded across the deck with the force of their impact, sending mages diving to escape the icy shrapnel.

I let loose another Tundra Tempest over the main deck of the vessel. Instantly, swirling clouds appeared out of the ether and swathed themselves around the masts like feather boas around the skinny necks of go-go dancers. Lightning flicked and flickered down onto the deck, leaving black singe marks and zapping the occasional mage. As the icicles started to fall, I saw Luctus crouched like a vulture on the rail of the poop deck.

“Don’t you fucking ruin it, asshole,” I hissed as I watched the yellow-skinned man raise his arms above his head.

But that is exactly what he did.

As Kazrith and I swept down toward the back of the ship, I caught a glimpse of Luctus spreading his long, spindly arms in a gesture that reminded me of someone pulling the curtains in the morning. A beam of light omitted from the gap between his hands and punched into the heart of my spell and began to instantly dissipate it.

At least, I thought, that’ll keep the dickhead busy while we cripple his ship.

The Amber Dragon banked around. His head turned on his thickly muscled neck. He took in a deep breath in as he readied himself to deliver his amber payload.

I was prepared for the dual cannons at the stern of the airship. I had made plans for them. As they swiveled as one to follow Kazrith, I waited… waited… and…

My Telekinesis spell had to be perfectly timed, and it was.

The cannon swiveled a full one-hundred degrees to the right, just as the gunner let her rip.

The manaball exploded the back of the captain’s cabin, blowing out the two guns and the two unfortunate gunners, along with a large portion of the stern.

At the same time, Kazrith jetted a stream of viscous amber all over the two sorcerous exhaust pipes that stuck out from rear of the ship, effectively clogging them closed so that the flames died and the boost that Luctus’s ship had been enjoying was cut.

I let out a whoop of delight and punched the air.

Just as Luctus’ evil-looking absinthe-green spell ripped into Kazrith’s left wing.

The curse might have cut me down too, had I not seen it at the last second, pulsating through the air like a transparent and noxious eel.

Kazrith howled and banked sharply away as I fired a few half-assed Blazing Bolts back in Luctus’ direction. Those spells were more to keep my adversary’s mind and hands occupied, which was all they ended up doing. He batted them away like tennis balls, using a glowing green heater shield he conjured from the ether.

“I am coming for you, Earthling,” he cried, and his voice was made, somehow, all the spookier by the fact that it was so polite and articulate, aristocratic and amiable. There wasn’t a trace of anger in it. Anyone overhearing him say those words might have been forgiven for thinking that the two of us were buddies.

Kazrith stayed low, while manaballs shot through the air around us. I sensed the Amber Dragon’s weakness, could feel that he needed to be summoned back into the Capture Orb so that he could heal.

I looked ahead and bit my lip nervously.

The Hellbringer was going to make the portal, no questions asked. The Venture might just sneak ahead of the Arcane Council airship that was in pursuit of The Hellbringer but, then again, it might not.

“Come on, Kazrith,” I said. “One last effort to make sure my friends can get away. Please.”

The Amber Dragon was breathing hard, heavily favoring his uninjured wing. If a creature could limp through the air, then Kazrith was doing just that. Nevertheless, he struggled gamely onward, making for the ship that was threatening to cut off the Venture.

We caught up with our target just as The Hellbringer was slipping through the technicolor portal. Kazrith sprayed the stern of the pursuing Arcane Council ship with another blast of amber. Although it jammed up the rudder and hardened so that the airship was bereft of steering, it was less sticky and thick than it had been before. The Amber Dragon was getting weaker by the second. What was more, the enemy vessel didn’t actually need to steer if it wanted to cut off the Venture. It was already on a crash course to T-bone it.

“Bring me up alongside them, Kazrith!” I yelled.

I felt the dragon give an almighty straining surge under me. He pulled up level with the ship, so that the deck and I were almost on a par. I raised my staff and aimed carefully, fixing what I wanted to do in my head clearly so that there could be no fucking it up.

And I hit the ship with a Meteor Shower.

It was, as I had hoped, devastatingly effective.

The rain of magically produced meteors came down like, well, like fucking heavy-ass rocks from the sky. They crashed down onto the deck of the ship, punching through the hull like it was crafted out of wafer. Spot fires ignited, sails were rent, and mages were crushed and smashed into smears of bone and pulped muscle.

A chorus of cheers went up from my friends as the Royal Airship Venture began to slide through the portal, the tip of the bow entering.

“Justin, come on, quick!” Queen Hagatha called from the rail.

I grinned, looked back at the enemy airship to make sure it was done for. Within a few seconds of the barrage starting, the airship was already listing heavily to starboard and smoking. The mages on board were screaming and running around like headless chickens, while their ship burned and threatened out of the air.

Which made it all the more surprising when one of the little fuckers managed to squeeze off one final manaball at Kazrith and me.

The shot hit Kazrith a glancing blow in his front leg. It didn’t do any discernable damage, but the ancient Amber Dragon was so badly weakened already that it simply knocked him out of the air. His one good wing flapped desperately as the injured one gave up the fight.

There was an agonizing moment as we hung suspended in the air, the stricken Arcane Council airship burning in the sky behind us. My eyes caught those of Queen Hagatha’s green ones, which were wide and round with shock.

And then, the enormous Amber Dragon and I fell out of the air. We plummeted toward the open countryside below, flipping and twisting in a roar of wind. The landscape came up to meet us. I couldn’t see straight, couldn’t get my head straight.

In that instant, it felt like Kazrith and I were fated to make a terrible mess on the countryside below.

Chapter 21

Down we spiraled, buffeted this way and that by the wind.

I was buffeted a little more than Kazrith, I’d dare to say, as the Amber Dragon and I kept colliding and it was like smacking into a scaly brick wall time and again. The giant old beast, who had fought so gamely and with so much heart, was rumbling with discontent. I doubted he was as worried about the ground that was rushing up to meet us, as he was preoccupied with his injured wing.

However, I was worried enough for the both of us about the ground coming up to smash our bones out of our bodies. That sort of thing will really put a crimp in your day, and I meant to survive this so that I could find that asshole, Luctus, and take him down.

First thing was first, though.

I scrabbled for my belt and managed to get my hands on the wooden Capture Orb. Once it was in my grasp, I summoned Kazrith back into it. In a flash of orange light, and with a grateful growl, the Amber Dragon was sucked back into the protection of the sphere, where he could start healing himself.

Once that was done, I was free to concentrate on the more pressing business of my immediate situation. It was a situation that was becoming more and more immediate by the passing second.

I twisted in the air and saw that, below me, there was a fine white mansion. It was getting closer fast.

Very, very fast.

“Uh-oh spaghetti-o's,” I said.

I used a burst of Flame Flight to slow my speed to something that must have been slightly less than terminal velocity, and this broke my fall considerably.

The rest of the credit for breaking my fall had to be heaped on the roof of the big, white mansion that I smashed through a second later. Luckily, I’d made use of my Metamorphosis spell, encasing myself in the rock-solid armor of the Gemstone Elementals.

I went through the roof of that mansion like an unexploded bomb. Tiles, roof beams, straw bale insulation, and plaster dust became my world as I punched through the roof, into the bedroom below, and through the floor of that room. While the Gemstone Elemental armor most assuredly protected me from what would otherwise have been an extremely terminal fall, it also added considerably to my weight.

With a crashing shriek and snap of bursting timbers and beautifully crafted plaster frescos, I pulverized my way through the floor-cum-ceiling of the bedroom and exploded into an elegant sitting room below. With a final, very jarring thud, I smashed down onto an antique sofa. The legs of this chaise lounge collapsed so violently under my weight that they pinwheeled across the room, punched into the walls, or smashed through a set of beautiful arching windows.

“Ooooowww,” I moaned, staring up at the ceiling and the hole that I had just made through the center of this lovely manor house. “Ow, that - that really… Ow…”

My Metamorphosis spell was released, and the translucent armor that covered my body faded away.

For a pleasant moment, I lay still and just enjoyed being not dead. The only sound was the occasional tinkle and smash as a roof tile dropped to the ground.

A dash of color in the corner of my eye made me turn my head. From where I lay on the collapsed chaise lounge, basically at floor level, the painting that hung on the wall next to me looked particularly massive. I squinted up at it dazedly.

It might be the fall, my brain told me, a little confusedly, but does that guy look familiar to you?

I squinted a little harder. There could be no doubt, there was something most definitely familiar about the broad, round-bellied, red-cheeked old boy who was glaring down at me out of the golden frame. For the life of me though, I couldn’t place it. It was something about the eyes and the wonderfully coiffed snowy hair.

Before I could solve this mystery, I was roused from my ruminations by someone behind me yelling, “Is that those fucking Chaosbanes again?!”

There was a banging of doors from off in the near distance, then a noise of someone bursting into the room I was in and gasping in horror.

Then a gruff, absolutely furious voice demanded, “Who the fucking hell are you, boy?”

With difficulty, I raised myself into a sitting position and turned around.

I blinked.

The man from the portrait that I had just been looking at was standing in the doorway. He was dressed in a blue button-up shirt, a cravat, and a pair of satin boxer shorts covered in broomsticks. Despite this rather bold choice of outfits, he was assuredly the dapper dude depicted in the portrait on the wall.

“I said, who in the name of blazes do you think you are, boy, and what are you doing in my house?!” the irate old fellow bellowed.

I got up, dust coming off me like snow and little pieces of wood and chunks of stone bouncing onto the marble floor.

“Me?” I asked. “Who are you? What’re you doing in here?” I gave my head a shake, and more plaster dust fell out of my hair.

The man goggled. He looked from me to the hole in the ceiling to me again. Then he went back to goggling at me. He was doing such a good job of goggling, his eyes almost popping out of his florid face.

“Me? Me?” he said in a voice that was strangled with emotion. “I’m Archmage Clitus Flamewalker! And this is my ruddy house!”

And it all fell into place. No wonder the old boy had a familiar look to his features; I had seen this same man back when I’d traveled to the Chaosbane ranch for Yuletide.

“Clitus?” I asked.

“That’s right!”

“And this is your place?”

“Yes!”

“That explains the getup,” I said, pointing at the man’s outrageous underwear.

I’d thought that Clitus Flamewalker had been at maximum redness in the face department, but he now went a shade of puce that told me I had been dead wrong. He looked in danger of having his head explode.

“It’s coming to something,” he roared, spraying spit in all directions, “when a man can’t even relieve himself in his own home without fear of having some ghastly vagabond drop through his ruddy ceiling!”

I nodded. “That’s a fair point. I’m really sorry about that, but I didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. I’m going to go now, if that’s okay with you, Clitus. Sorry for interrupting you when you were midway through growing a monkey tail. That sucks.”

I exited the room, the irate Flamewalker hurrying along behind me, shaking his fist and frothing at the mouth.

“Exit this way?” I asked, making my way down a corridor toward with a lot of natural light. Clitus didn’t reply but continued to splutter and snarl at my heels like a pissed off bulldog that’s just swallowed a nettle.

I found the front door and let myself out. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do next, but I knew I had to do it quickly before someone from the Arcane Council came looking.

There was only one thing that I could think to do. One place nearby that might offer me some sanctuary while I figured out my next step.

“Hey, Clitus, do you know which way the Chaosbane Ranch is from here?” I asked.

The old man’s popeyed expression, which was reminding me more and more of a toad that’s just been run over, became even more emphasized. He burbled incoherently as a deep-seated anger raged through his insides. He looked very much like he wanted to tell me to go and fist myself to death.

“The sooner you tell me, the sooner I’m out of that beautiful Flamewalker hair of yours,” I said.

Clitus’ arm shot up in an involuntary-looking spasm to point me in the direction I needed to go.

“Awesome. Thanks,” I said. “Once again, sorry about barging in on you when you were in the middle of busting a grumpy. That’s my bad. Now, though, I shall leave you in peace.”

I turned on my heel and took one step across the porch.

A crackling miasma of foggy spectral light formed in the middle of the lawn and took the shape of a globe. It bulged outward, contorting in places, as if there was some giant insect inside of this elasticated shell of energy that was eager to get out.

“What in the name of buggery is this?” I heard Clitus Flamewalker say angrily from behind me. “Is this excrescence with you?”

“Is it here with me?” I said. “Doubtful. Is it here for me? Maybe.”

The crackling ball of occult energy, rippling with red and yellow strands of liquid lightning began to shrink in on itself. It took on an oily yellow hue.

“Ah,” I said, feeling my staff materialize in my hand. “Ah, I see what we’ve got here. This is the fucking showdown, isn’t it?”

Luctus stepped out of the yellow-skinned bubble, which dissolved to nothing.

“Justin Thyme, or should I say Justin Mauler?” he crooned softly. There was a slightly tremulous edge to the guy’s voice, a faint quaver that made me picture something bending under very high tension.

“Hello, fuckhead,” I said. “You know how I know that you’re really nailing the social niceties and leaving a good impression? Because I’ve just fallen out of the sky, through the roof of a stately home, and caught a pensioner with his trousers down, and seeing your ugly mug is still the low point in my day.”

Luctus said nothing, but his polite smile widened a little and took on a slightly manic edge.

“What’s up, Luctus?” I asked. “You look stressed.”

Luctus giggled then: a horrible sound. Quite mad and devoid of anything that might have even resembled humor.

“Stressed…” he said, flowing forward a little so that he and I were separated only by about fifteen yards of grass. “Stressed. Yes. While that is perhaps not the most apt description, it hits close enough to the mark to merit acknowledgement. Stressed. Yes.”

I made an understanding face. “I see. You’ve gone totally fucking crazy, is that it? Mad with power or something? That’s the kind of shit that guys in your line of work have got to watch out for, you know.”

“Mad with power? No,” Luctus said, still talking as casually as if we were having this conversation over a gin and tonic at the club. “But filled with power? Brimming over with power? Pregnant with power?”

I raised an eyebrow at him.

“Then, yes, perhaps,” Luctus said.

Then it dawned on me. The sarcophagi. The reason for gathering the Creation Mages.

“You’ve been drawing off and extracting power from Creation Mages, right?” I asked. “Sucking the power out of them like a tick. You and whoever you’re working with.”

“The Immortals,” Luctus said.

“Right, the Immortals,” I said.

“But not just from the Creation Mages,” Luctus said amiably, “we have been drawing from beyond them. They simply became conduits for something far greater!”

I raised my eyebrows. “The Universal Magic.”

Luctus’ face contorted with deranged glee. “Correct! Quite correct!”

“I’m not going to lie, I’m quite surprised that you’re just out and out telling me this,” I said. “Usually in these situation, guys like me have to work for the confession or, if we don’t, the asshole—that’s you—usually goes on forever about how smart he is, how cool, how fucking clever. Thanks for keeping it short and sweet.”

“Why would I not?” Luctus said in his friendly, polite tone. “I’m going to slaughter you in the next few minutes. The least I can do is give you closure of a sort. Then, me and my brethren can get back to the more pressing business we have started.”

I nodded slowly. “Excessive power can really mess with the old brain box, you know. Haven’t you ever seen The Godfather?”

“Who’s godfather would that—”

I summoned the Frostfire Golem so that it stood right behind Luctus. Before the magical entity could squeeze his bald-ass head off his neck, my opponent had dematerialized and left a floating orb of aquamarine in his stead.

The orb blew up, expanding like a big balloon, and dissolved the golem. Then it came for me.

I blew the growing shell into smoking ruins with some Frost Shards, then whirled low so that I could stab out at Luctus with my staff.

The physical blow caught the creeping bastard right in his chest as he moved in close to me with his arms raised. I managed to use a little of my Leech spell and draw away some of his mana, but then he countered with a burning red spell that lifted me from my feet.

As I flew thirty feet through the air, I dropped a Crystal Magma Bomb so that Luctus would have to deal with that before he could pounce on me. The grenade detonated with a wet thump as the well-watered lawn took the brunt of the explosion. Dirt sprayed in all directions.

I landed hard, rolled to my feet, and then threw myself to the side, while conjuring a large shield with my Flame Barrier spell. The shield absorbed the Death Magic spell that Luctus fired at me; a curse that left twin streaks of burning grass in its wake.

He’s throwing all kinds of magic at me, my brain noted as my shield burst into molten fragments. Death, Holy, Fire… How is he doing that?

There was no opportunity to ask him. That’s the thing about these intense duels that the movies get so wrong. There really isn’t time for any clever back and forth once the spells start flying. If you think you’re in a position to lay a juicy one-liner on your adversary, it’s usually because they’ve lulled you into a false sense of security and you’re about to be killed.

Magic blazed across the Flamewalkers’ lawn.

Luctus used a Wind Magic spell to toss the lawn furniture at me so that I was forced to adopt my Gemstone Elemental armor. As I punched aside the final heavy wooden table he flung at my head, I deployed my Blazing Bolt, sending the crackling Storm and Fire Magic hybrid spell sizzling past my opponent’s head.

Luctus countered with a sweep of his arm. Spines of rock, which I recognized as being stalagmites or stalactites, tore themselves out of the earth around him, kindled into flame in midair, and hurtled toward me.

A deft use of Telekinesis from me, and the missiles spread themselves around me. They smashed into the front facade of Clitus Flamewalkers’ palatial pad, exploding on impact like fifty-caliber machine gun rounds and taking chunks of plaster out of the walls and leaving scorch marks in their wake.

Then, I played my ace.

The Blazing Bolt that had zipped past Luctus’ head, I brought swinging back around. As Luctus’ mad face twisted and his hands formed a shape for his next spell, the Blazing Bolt caught him squarely in the back and sent him stumbling forward, his swirling black robes billowing around him and obscuring his view.

That’s what happened when you went for fashion over function.

In the infinitesimal moment during which he couldn’t see me, I used my Sword Dance spell.

The trio of whirling blades slid out of the ether, forged and hardened to the strength of ten-fold steel.

Without hesitation, I sent the first and second blades whipping into the power-addled form of Luctus.

The yellow-skinned man was hit by the first sword and pierced through the right side of the chest. The second one punctured him through the left. It happened as quick as that. One moment, it could have been argued that the prick was on top of the fight, the next he was a human pincushion.

Such is life.

Such is death.

Luctus fell to his knees, a sword through each side of his bony chest, wheezing. His face was a mask of disbelief, but he was still grinning, which told me the son of a bitch was as mad as a hatter, just as I’d thought.

“Just a little longer,” he moaned. “A little longer and I would have… mastered it! Would have controlled it!”

“Controlled it?” I said. “Didn’t look like you were doing too badly.” I glanced over my shoulder. “Although, I don’t know what old Clitus is going to say about what you’ve done to the front of his house.”

“Too much… Too soon. That is all. It is a cruel universe… To have such a taste and to be robbed of it.”

“Yeah, that’s really too bad, you fucking nutcase,” I said.

“I shall never die, not truly!” Luctus burbled, blood spilling out from between his pale yellow lips, his black eyes wide and psychotic. “For I... am one of… the Immortals!”

I tipped my head to one side and considered the foul fiend before me.

“You sure don’t look too fucking immortal to me,” I said.

The third sword whirled, in a blur of thaumaturgical steel that was too fast for the naked eye to follow, and then vanished in a greasy puff of ether.

Luctus’ insane, bloody grin was still stretched taut across his face. The man himself, and I still didn’t know whether it was right or accurate to call him a man, didn’t move a muscle.

Slowly, very slowly, a red line seeped across his scrawny neck, followed by the merest trickle of blood. With a sound that reminded me of a wet towel being peeled off a locker room floor, the leering mage’s head peeled backward from his neck. Stark white bone shone from amongst the gristle and fat and blood. Then, with a depressing—for Luctus at least—thump, his shiny bald dome hit the grass and his body toppled over sideways.

Slowly, I raised my arm and flipped the dead guy the bird. “Bye, Luctus,” I said. “You should’ve stayed on your meds, you luna-fucking-tic.”

The smoky, hazy cloak that had swathed Luctus in life drifted away into nothing, revealing the skinny body of the man beneath, dressed in the standard black robes of the holy man or the fanatic.

Without warning, the corpse exploded in a kaleidoscope of colors and magical energies. I staggered backward, my hand raised to my face. The ground was churned by a brief rising wind and bits of soil were flicked up. The colors swirled, coalesced, and then rose into the sky and disbanded, scattering into the broad blueness of the azure vault above.

When the dust settled and Clitus Flamewalker’s lawn had stopped raining down from on high, I looked to see what had happened to Luctus’ body. The corpse was no longer there. All that remained was a smoking crater and a pile of tattered robes sitting at the bottom.

I stood there, painting heavily, and wiped my face on the back of my arm. I was sweating profusely. With the numerous fights of that day and the toll they had taken on my mana reserves, I was feeling like I’d been ridden hard and put away wet. I swayed a little as I took a couple of steps back and eyed the crater that Luctus had left in his wake, blinking hard a couple of times to make sure that I was seeing what I thought I was seeing.

I smiled then, looked up at the sky, and laughed with a relieved joy.

“Well… Fuck me to tears, that was one hell of a fight!” I said.

There was a dull thump from behind me, and I turned. The front door of the Flamewalker manor house had fallen forward onto the porch.

Clitus Flamewalker staggered outside. He was still dressed in his shirt and boxer shorts. His mouth was hanging open.

“Gods-damn it,” he cried in a wounded voice as he surveyed his once beautiful front lawn, which now resembled a set from 1917. “I only just got the lawn landscaped after those Chaosbane buggers ruined it the last ruddy time with their giant flying bulls!”

I recalled that vividly, during the Yuletide that had just passed. Exercising a degree of tact, I decided to not mention it.

I looked around, taking in the long scorch marks, the scarred grass, the craters, and the ruined front of the house.

“Yah, it, uh, might need a little work,” I admitted. “If I were you, I’d send the bill to the Arcane Council.”

The conversation lapsed a little then.

I was going to ask Clitus whether he’d finished the dump I’d interrupted and, if he hadn’t, suggest that he might feel better if he did. He turned just before I was about to ask him though, and I saw that the back of his broomstick-embroidered boxers had a telling brown streak down the ass.

Well, I thought, it was a pretty gnarly battle.

I was just thinking that I should probably make a move for the Chaosbane’s ranch when Clitus Flamewalker gave a low moan and waddled back inside the house as fast as his legs would carry him.

“What the…?” I said, looking up at the sound of a shouted greeting.

Four specks up in the sky quickly resolved into the shapes of familiar figures riding broomsticks.

“Holy hell, if it isn’t the cavalry,” I said, a smile of genuine delight and relief spreading across my face.

Nigel Windmaker, Damien Davis, Bradley Flamewalker, and Rick Hammersmith swooped smoothly down from the heavens to land on the rutted and ruined lawn. Rick, as was his wont, landed a little more heavily than the others and smashed through the last surviving sun lounger.

I couldn’t be sure, but I was almost certain that I heard a whimper of angry despair emanate from out of the house.

“Your ride awaits, sir!” Damien said, tossing me my broomstick, which he had been carrying under his arm.

“Thanks,” I said, snatching it out of the air and mounting it.

“What the hell happened to Grandpa Clitus’ garden?” Bradley asked in astonishment. “He’s going to shit a brick when he sees this!”

I gave Bradley a thoughtful look. “You know what, man,” I said, “I think you’re right.”

“Okay, I’m getting all warm and fuzzy about us all being together again,” said Damien, “but I think we should blow this popsicle stand while the going is good.”

“Agreed,” I said, “but where to? I was thinking—”

“The Chaosbane Ranch,” Nigel said. “The Headmaster has set up a temporary portal in the dining room, which will take us straight back to the Stronghold. I’ve no idea how he did it, as such a piece of magic would take at least thirty-six average strength mages to even attempt, if my calculations are correct. I really must ask him—”

“Now is no time for nerd-boner, friend,” Rick said, kicking a piece of sun lounger off his huge sandaled foot. “It’s time for us to boogie.”

The five of us kicked off from the earth but kept low as we tore across the countryside and headed to the Chaosbane Ranch. Once we were there, we dismounted right outside of the doors of the large family dining room and found a portal waiting for us, just as my fraternity brothers had said there’d be.

“I’ll tell you what, boys,” I said, “I’ll be glad to get back to base. I think I might have used up all my lives for today.”

With our broomsticks over our shoulders, the five of us marched through the portal and left the war-torn countryside that surrounded Manafell, and the distantly smoking grounds of the Castle of Ascendance, behind us.

Chapter 22

It was a few hours later, and I was feeling a little more human having been the beneficiary of a chicken and fog pepper sandwich and a pint of Witch Skinner’s Old Peculiar Ale.

We stood, Reginald Chaosbane and I, to one side of one of the larger parade grounds in the Stronghold of the Twin Spirits. We were watching the war mages troop in. Many of them were carrying knocks and injuries. Some were being carried in by their friends.

The mood was unusually somber. The atmosphere was suffused with a serious and meditative introspection, as if every mage now knew we were at war.

This had been merely the first battle. And there would be many more, unless we came up with a way to save the Universal Magic, restore Queen Hagatha to her throne, and serve up the Arcane Council and these Immortals a nice, big, steaming bowl of go fuck yourself.

“Well,” Reginald said, offering me one of the many flasks he always carried on his person, “we may not have precisely achieved what we wanted to achieve. Even still, there has been some unforeseen good come out of this battle with the Arcane Council and these Immortals that you heard about, mate.”

It was not often that I was foolish or brave enough to take a flask offered to me by Reginald Chaosbane, but I took it this time. The forces of our resistance had seemingly taken their fair share of a hammering in the battle at the castle. There were many wounded, many dead, and quite a few still missing and unaccounted for. I flipped open the stopper and took a long drink, bracing myself to have my tongue numbed or my brain dissolved. I frowned and took another drink.

“Is that chocolate milk?” I asked.

Reginald Chaosbane grinned at me. “You bet your balloon tie it is, mate. Nothing like a good old post-battle chocolate milk. Really helps with settling the jitters, if you ask me.”

I sighed and handed him back the flask. “It is delicious,” I admitted, “but I was hoping for something a little stronger.”

“Give it about an hour,” Reginald muttered airily.

“What was that?”

“Oh, nothing! Nothing! Not a thing.”

I gave him a sideways glance. “What do you mean that there was some unforeseen good that came out of that fight? Unforeseen would discount the rescuing of Bernice Silvertongue, I guess, seeing as that finding and saving Creation Mages was what this mission was all about.”

“Indeed, yes,” Reginald said, after he had taken a hearty pull of the chocolate milk and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Yes indeedy-do finding Creation Mages was the aim of the game, Justin. Yes, it was. However, we have had a new and heartening development in our little, fairly important quest to save the Universal Magic and the universe itself. And it is all thanks to you.”

“To me?” I asked, flummoxed. “I haven’t done anything since abseiling off the Royal Airship Venture except fight and take down enemies. As fun and exhilarating as that was, I’d hardly call it constructive. Quite the opposite actually.”

“Ah, but you see, this is why the universe is such a hot mess,” Reginald told me excitedly. “The universe is such a complex and volatile and oppugnant little bitch, but good gods, it knows what it’s about! Has a hell of a sense of humor too, once you get past the cruelty of it all.”

“Headmaster,” I said, “I’m not sure if you just explained something to me, if you did, I missed it.”

Reginald Chaosbane emptied his chocolate milk flask into his mouth and smacked his lips with absolute relish. “You know, don’t tell anyone this, but I have to get this stuff smuggled across universal parallel lines. Comes from a place in Nova Zeelandia called the Bay of Plenty where—”

“Sir, you’re getting a little sidetracked there,” I said gently.

“Right, right, good point, that man! Yes, well, as I was saying,” Reginald said, putting the empty flask away, “it was something that you did that alerted us to an intriguing new development in our battle.”

“And this was…?” I asked.

“I won’t bore you with all the jargon,” Reginald said to me, “but there are those amongst us who are highly attuned to deciphering the changes in pitch and vibration that thrum through the universe. I am one of these galactic tuning forks, for instance.”

“And I did something that changed the vibrations of the Universal Magic?” I guessed hesitantly.

“Yes! Yes, that’s it, in a rather ill-formed and massively simplified nutshell, Mr. Mauler,” Reginald said. “You see, when you killed that chap, Luctus, it released a veritable surge of magic or mana back into the world. There is, if you are attuned to such things, a nonstop fluctuation of mana coming in and out of our world, as mages use it and diffuse it., but this surge, this efflux, was one of such a magnitude that I, and the few others like me, felt it without having to consciously calibrate our minds to pick up the signal.”

“So, what? You’re saying that by killing Luctus, by killing one who counted himself as being one of these Immortals, I restored the Universal Magic?”

“You restored some of it, but not nearly all. Your action didn’t save the world, mate, but it helped bring some of it back. It helped to anchor the Universal Magic a little more strongly.”

“Which is good?” I asked.

“Yes, yes, yes, mate, very good. Not break out the champagne and usher in the start of a bender to put all other benders to shame, but certainly very helpful.”

“That’s good news,” I said. “So, I’ve bought us some more time?”

“Not only that,” Reginald said, “but I believe that it shows us that there might be an alternative way to saving our world, and all other worlds, mate.”

“So, you’re saying that the fact that we were only able to find a single live Creation Mage doesn’t mean we’re totally ballsed?” I asked bluntly. “We don’t need to find another three?”

“We should still try to find other Creation Mages,” Reginald said, looking at me with those clever, dark Chaosbane eyes of his. “But, if that fiend, Luctus, was anything to go by, it seems that whoever has been sapping and siphoning the Universal Magic has been using the captured Creation Mages to do it. Using Luctus as evidence, I would say that whoever has been doing this has been making themselves more powerful in the process—trying to gain the dizzying powers that those most lazy, capricious, and unreliable bunch of reprobates—the gods—hold in their hands.”

“Luctus certainly was a handful,” I said, recalling all too easily just how much of a tax fighting the shadowy Sith-like figure had been.

“Yes, I imagine he was a one of those unsavory individuals; as cold as an ex-wife’s heart and tough as a stewed wombat.”

“Yeah, he was. But he was also an idealist. He truly believed in whatever his schemes were. I could see that idealism banked up and burning behind his eyes.”

“Yep, they are the most dangerous of men,” Reginald said sagely. “Nothing burns hotter than a deep-rooted ideal—except, perhaps, the volcanic vodka brewed on the little known islands of the Crabitch Isles.”

Reginald shivered and stroked his mustaches. “Gods, I love that shit,” he said. “Gives you a hangover the likes of which you think you’ll never recover from, but for a night, you feel like you’re invincible.”

“So, do we have a plan for what we’ll do next?” I asked, trying to cut the Headmaster off before he got into a rut of recollection for parties long finished.

“Hm? Well, I think it would be prudent for us to go and start forging bridges with our new Creation Mage acquaintance. Word is already spreading through our forces of the prowess she showed in battle before she was struck by that spell.”

“Yeah, she’s a tiger, there’s no denying that,” I said.

Reginald and I made our way to where most of our close-knit team were assembled. There was a small circle of empty space around Bernice Silvertongue, as though there’d been unwritten agreement to give her a little bit of room while she acclimatized to her new surroundings.

Reginald, of course, broke his way into that space without a moment’s hesitation.

I saw Bernice bristle as the Chaos Mage came to stand over her and look down at her.

“Allow me to introduce myself, Miss Silvertongue,” he said, with all the dapper swagger and gentility of an eighteenth-century poet. “I’m Reginald Chaosbane, the unofficially official leader of this little gathering of ours. It’s a pleasure for us to have you amongst us, Miss Silvertongue, and an honor as well.”

“As for being amongst all of you,” Bernice said, looking around warily and wincing a little as she moved her sore head, “I wasn't given too much of a choice, was I?”

“I presumed that you would much prefer the company of us anti-Arcane Council renegades to having your brain dissected and your mana sucked out of you like pus being drawn from a boil,” Reginald said.

That looked like it hit the mark. Bernice paled a little.

“I was unaware of the dissection of the brain part,” she said.

Reginald waved an airy hand. “Oh, I’m unsure of the details exactly, my dear woman,” he said, “but that’s what I would have done if I’d taken a turn for Super Villain Town, which interestingly I almost did. It was all because of some bad lightyear paste that Igor had bought off one of the many degenerate types that he knows in Powder Lane. The two of us took this stuff, rectally of course, and—”

“What the Headmaster here is trying to say,” I said, cutting across Reginald’s anecdote before he could convince Bernice that he was completely and absolutely insane, “is that you’re safe here, at the Stronghold of the Twin Spirits.”

Bernice eyed me with something that was about as close to trust as someone who had been put into a thaumaturgically-induced coma was likely to look at anyone with.

As much as I wanted to ease the woman into things, I couldn’t help but wonder how I’d broach the subject of needing to sleep with her at some point.

While I waited for inspiration to strike, I offered Bernice one of my most winning smiles and said, “So, now that you’re all safe and free from the Arcane Council, for the time being, I was wondering, do you fancy a drink sometime? It’s just that it’d be great to go out on a boat with you or something and talk. You’re the first Creation Mage that I’ve ever met. I thought I was the only one.”

Bernice Silvertongue raised an eyebrow. “It seems to me, almost, that you rescued me from captivity only to put me back in chains of a different sort. never agreed to help you past the battle at the Castle of Ascendance, I made that perfectly clear. I said I would only hear you out.”

“Chains? No, no chains,” I said. “Although, if you’ve something against chains and fancy undergoing therapy of a kind to reverse that view, then you should meet Isobel Galeflint. She’s a big fan of chains. Whips, too, actually. And hot wax.”

Bernice gave me a look of such surpassing stoniness that I could have carved a Chaosbane Mount Rushmore into it.

“All right,” I said. “We’ll take a rain check on that one, then.”

Reginald gave me one of those surreptitious nods that everyone except the nodder finds about as covert as a paving stone being thrown through a window.

I rolled my eyes and excused myself from Bernice, before sidling casually away with the Headmaster.

“Looks like it’s going to take some time for her to thaw,” Reginald Chaosbane said.

“I can’t really blame her for not softening up straight off the bat, though,” I said. “It’d take me more than a day to stop viewing everyone that I came across as untrustworthy, if I’d been kept out cold for however many years it’s been, while the people that I should have been able to trust used my fellow Creation Mages like magical and disposable dairy cows. She just needs some time.”

“Ah yes, time: the great healer. It is said that it heals all wounds, although, according to my dear cousin Igor, not all sexually transmitted illnesses. At least you’ll have a bit of it now—time I mean, not sexually transmitted diseases.”

“How do you figure that?” I asked. “As gnarly as that battle was, I get the impression that it was only the tip of the iceberg. I feel like we just stirred up the hornets’ nest.”

Reginald stroked his mustache a little as he listened to me. He stared up at the sky for a while, apparently lost in thought. He nodded.

“Very colorful analogies, Mr. Mauler,” he said. “I particularly enjoyed the tip of the iceberg one. It was new to me.”

“You’ve never heard the expression ‘it’s the tip of the iceberg’?” I asked.

“No, indeed.”

“It’s literally the most common expression that I can think of,” I said.

“Really?”

I shook my head, choosing, as I so often did, to ignore the Headmaster’s idiosyncrasies.

“So what makes you think we have a little time to play with?” I asked the Chaos Mage as we turned our eyes toward the collection of war mages that filled the courtyard. There were plenty of wounded, and not just those suffering from conventional injuries. One guy I could see nearby had his head turned into a pumpkin. I wondered what kind of spell did that, and what kind of mad bastard would use it in the middle of a fight.

“Hmm, makes one peckish for risotto or soup, doesn’t it,” Reginald said quietly.

“What?”

“Nothing, nothing, I was just saying that it’ll be some time before the Arcane Council can get a foothold in the Spectral Realm,” Reginald said. “In the meantime, we have to find some Creation Mages to spring from out of the ether. It’s either that or hunt down these Immortals. Both options seem rather difficult.”

I didn’t say anything, but something in Reginald’s tone gave me the impression that what he was proposing was, indeed, a lost cause. If possible, the man sounded like he didn’t really have a plan for the next step in our mission.

It was a weird thought, and a weirder feeling. In truth, I’d never assumed Reginald Chaosbane had much of a plan. I’d always been in awe of him. He was one of those guys who seems to always be reacting to situations and scenarios that he finds himself in, and yet managing to react in such a way that he could steer the course of events for a whole world.

Right now, though, his clever eyes were staring thoughtfully over at Queen Hagatha, where she was busy tending to the wounded.

“Good queening,” he said approvingly.

“Getting amongst the common soldiers and helping him with their pain?” I asked. “Yeah, pretty classic move. Shows a good heart and a willingness to get her hands dirty.”

“Being royal is mostly about perfecting a really good wave and making sure that your public relations game is iron-clad, mate,” Reginald said to me. “That’s why the Chaosbanes have never made good politicians.”

“Terrible public relations, you mean?” I asked. “You know, on Earth, you can hire people to keep you out of self-created messes.”

Reginald shot me an utterly bamboozled look. “Where would be the fun in that?” he asked, with genuine astonishment. “No, I was talking about the other thing. Waving. Don’t have the ulnas for it. The Chaosbane Clan has always been about as skilled at waving as an octopus suffering from a palsy.”

“We’ve all got our weaknesses, sir,” I said.

“Yes we do, Justin, yes we do,” the Headmaster said. “Everyone has their vulnerable spot; that one thing that, despite a person’s finest efforts, will always bring them crashing to their knees, regardless of how strong they are otherwise. For some people, for many, it’s love. For reprobates like my sweet cousin Igor, it is anything that can be dripped into the ear, smoked, snorted, shelved, or slipped under that vile mustache of his and drunk. As a collective, the Chaosbanes’ weakness has always been waving.”

We stared out over the milling soldiery, at the mages busy tending to one another, ensuring that those around them were all right. I could see the frat boys some way off, helping bring in supplies from one of the ships. Best friends, Cecilia and Janet, were conversing with Archmage and Lady Chillgrave. Alura had disappeared off somewhere with her father, probably to have some sort of family debrief, while Madame Xel was helping Enwyn and Leah whip up a potion that was simmering in a huge cauldron over a bright pink fire.

“Ah, a good idea,” Reginald said, when he saw where I was looking. “Pink fire can only mean Leah is brewing up a batch of her infamous resilience rum punch. That’ll keep everyone’s spirits up.”

“Or part them from their spirits,” I said.

Reginald shrugged and pointed toward the other side of the parade ground.

“And that’s what it’s all about, don’t you think?” he said. “Though fighting for peace has always struck me as a strange oxymoron, when you see such things as that, you can’t help but think that it might all be worth it, somehow.”

Acer and her sister were embracing, while Idman Thunderstone stood awkwardly in the background. My eyes flicked slightly to the right of this scene, and I smiled.

“Battle brings people together—”

“Usually very briefly and violently,” Reginald murmured.

“—but I wasn’t expecting it to work miracles,” I finished.

Reginald Chaosbane’s eyebrow rose an eighth of an inch.

“My suns and stars, would you look at that!” he breathed, actually rubbing his eyes to make sure that he wasn’t hallucinating—probably something that happened to him at least twice a week.

Even Igor was helping, in a roundabout way, by setting up a tent over by the wall. He was currently wrapped in rope and cursing enthusiastically, while Mort attempted to free him.

“A fine effort,” Reginald said.

There was a sudden swell of arguing as three people walked past us. It was Great Grandaddy Gorlbadock Chaosbane getting an earful from Aunt Ruth, while Gertrude and her purple perm floated serenely along behind them. As she caught my eye, the former Inscriber tipped me a wink.

“I’ve been pondering, Headmaster,” I said, “on what you said about weaknesses. Everyone and everything has at least one. That’s the way of the universe, isn’t it? For every positive there must be a negative, for every pull a push, etcetera?”

“So I believe, mate,” Reginald said. “So I believe. There are a lot of maniacs who think that if you could magically blanch the pain out of the world, that you’d make it a better place somehow. These silly sausages often forget that, without the pain, we’d have no notion of joy either. One comes with the other, being equipped with the intelligence that we have.”

He looked over at Igor, who was now enfolded in canvas as well as rope. Mort stood by, shaking his albino head.

“The intelligence that some of us have,” Reginald amended.

“Well, with that in mind,” I said, “these bad guys—”

“And girls, Justin,” Reginald said, with what might have been his best impression of an actual Academy head. “Never forget that there are very few things that have ever existed—including, but not limited to, the pie-eyed weasel, the golden lot lizard ,and the poison-nosed mantis—that can rival the female brain for sheer cunning, ruthlessness, and the ability to find things that are hidden from mortal sight but, apparently, are actually right in front of our noses.”

“Right, well, these Immortals then have set in motion the eradication of the Universal Magic, right?”

“Basically, yes,” came a cool voice from behind me. “They have, through the heinous means of harvesting mana from Creation Mages, essentially been mining the world of mana in its purest form. And it seems like they’ve been doing it for a good while. Since before the Void Wars. Before even the Twin Spirits.”

“Mallory Entwistle, what a pleasure,” Reginald Chaosbane said, leaning in to kiss the Holy Mage’s hand.

Mallory nodded at Reginald and smiled at me.

“Excuse me if the conclusion that I have jumped to on overhearing your meandering conversation is the wrong one,” said Mallory, “but from what I gather, Justin, you seem to be thinking along the lines of…”

“I’m thinking along the lines that these assholes have captured and are making use of my fellow Creation Mages,” I said, slapping the back of my hand into my palm. “They’re picking them apart and draining them of their individual magic and killing them, while also tapping into the mana of the universe and bringing about its ending. And they’re doing this all because they, whoever they are, want to become uber powerful. Right?”

“That’s correct,” Mallory said, while Reginald pulled a small tin out his pocket, rubbed his finger into the golden goo that was inside, and smeared it under his top lip.

“That’s right,” he said.

“Finding and fucking the various surviving Creation Mages, who we thought they still had locked up would have reversed this flow of power, but now that’s out of the question,” I continued.

Mallory nodded.

“Now, if they’re taking this Universal Magic into themselves, then I was thinking that we may be able to at least save some of the Universal Magic, and return it back into the world, by killing the remaining Immortal assholes who’ve sapped it all up.”

The Headmaster of the Mazirian Academy smeared a little more of the golden goo around the inside of his mouth and made some pensive noises in the back of his throat.

“I do like where your head’s at, Mr. Mauler,” he said. “There is something very honest, and very right, about going after those who killed the Creation Mages out of simple and, let’s face it, fairly clichéd greed. It is also currently our best hope, I suppose… It’s such a shame though, as you coupling with the Creation Mages would have involved a lot less conflict and messy casualties on all sides.”

“There might be another way,” Mallory said. Her words dripped with barely concealed excitement, which was all the more portentous because Mallory was habitually as chilled as a penguin’s nutsack.

“You think there might be another way to somehow reach the Creation Mages?” I asked the Holy Mage.

“I do,” Mallory said, and she made a gesture, as if to include the Stronghold and everything around it.

“How?” I asked, frowning. Then, a thought struck me from left field. “Wait a second… we’re in the Spectral Realm!”

Mallory beamed at me and nodded. “It would be a possibility, and at this point, I see no harm in entertaining even the wildest of theories, that there might very well be at least a few of the slain Creation Mages here, in this world, with us!”

“And we’ve already figured out that I can get spells from ghosts,” I said, my eyes gazing sightlessly into a future filled with possibilities. “Isobel Galeflint showed me that.”

“Finding the cheeky little devils might present a bit of a problem,” Reginald said. Whatever he had rubbed on his gums and lips had given his skin a golden blush, and sparks occasionally popped out of his ears. “But it could be one that our good, and very saucy-looking, friend Madame Xel can solve for us.”

“Xel!” Mallory yelled. “Get over here!”

Madame Xel, shining mauve hair held up in a bun today, and dressed in one of her usual skimpy PVC-looking outfits, strutted over to us.

“Hello, gorgeous things,” she said, her slightly demonic eyes glittering mischievously. “How can I be of service?”

“We were just discussing Creation Mages and where their souls go after they die,” Mallory explained.

“I see,” Xel said, understanding flitting over her demonic features.

“You do?” I asked, turning to look at the yellow-eyed Xel.

“Creation Mages, as you have seen and as you know,” the Headmaster said to me, “are powerful beyond measure while in the realm of the living. And, for that depth of power and the things they inevitably do with it, their souls pay a price.” He then fixed his eyes on Madame Xel and smiled.

I frowned again, thinking that I had put two-and-two together, but not necessarily being enthralled with the answer.

“Hold up,” I said. “Let me get this straight. Are you saying that, because Creation Mages are so powerful, that we all go to Hell?”

“A hell,” Reginald said, in the tone of a man who had just cleared something up instead of making it more confusing.

“Oh, a hell,” I said. “That’s a bit more comforting. My uncle always said it was good to have something to look forward to.”

“And he was quite right!” Reginald said cheerfully. He slipped his little finger into one ear, waggled it around, and freed more of the floating, sparking moats.

I ignored the Headmaster and focused on Mallory Entwistle. “So, it’s kind of like the ‘All Dogs Go to Heaven’ rule, but in the opposite direction?”

“That’s right,” she said. “In a way.”

Madame Xel sighed and gave Reginald Chaosbane a rueful smile. “Are you asking me what I think you’re asking me, Reggie?”

“How would you feel about going back to your old stomping grounds, Xel?” Mallory cut in.

Madame Xel cocked her head to one side. “The Infernal Realm?”

“That’s right,” Mallory said. “We need to find some Creation Mages and bring them back here, and we need to do it fast.”

Madame Xel ruffled her leathery wings a little. It was the succubi version of puffing out her cheeks thoughtfully.

“You want me to go home?” she asked.

“Yes,” Mallory replied.

Madame Xel sighed. “My father won’t like that,” she said, but I noticed a playful grin of anticipation lurking on her pretty face.

“Why?” I asked. “Why won’t he be stoked to see you?”

“I’ve never told you about my father?”

“You did mention something about him a while back,” I said, “but I’m unsure if my memory is recalling what you told me correctly. You made him sound like he had quite a fiery temperament.”

“Oh, you know how it is, these hotshot CEO types,” Madame Xel said. “They’ve got the weight of the underworld on their shoulders, refuse to give up sole ownership of their empire so that they can take things a little easier, and are then surprised that their daughters get sick and tired of them blowing up all the time and decide to walk out on them.”

“I feel like there were a lot of puns in there, and I didn’t get all of them,” I said.

Madame Xel grinned, a smile that could have made the Pope chuck in the whole celibacy thing, rolled her eyes.

“He’s not, you know, the Devil is he?” I asked.

Madame Xel considered this. She tapped a long finger against her full lips. “I believe that is what he’s known as on some small world or other, where there are quite a few people who are behind the… oh.”

I waved. “Yeah, that’d be Earth.”

Madame Xel smiled sweetly and fluttered her eyelashes once more. “Well, each to their own, of course. But that is one of his many names, yes. And he does a good trade on your world, if I’m not mistaken.”

I snorted, shook my head, and thought that this crazy world just kept getting crazier. Living in it was like walking through a forest, rebounding off the trees, and having to handle the deluge of nuts that rained out.

“Well then,” I said, “shouldn’t the whole searching for the Creation Mages pickle be a fairly easy one to solve? You can just call in a favor from your dear old dad, right? Ask him to check his books or scrolls or whatever and point us in the right direction.”

Madame Xel gave me a pitying smile. “Ah, Justin, that eternal optimism of yours is one of the reasons why I am so fond of you. You assume that my father is the sort of individual that you can reason with.” She shook her beautiful head and pouted. “That’s cute.”

“I’m sure he thinks he’s the fucking ultimate badass,” I replied, “but surely even he should see that the entire collapse and destruction of the universe is bad for everybody?”

“Justin,” Reginald Chaosbane said, “I’ve popped by your world from time to time—ememberray ethay ocolatechay ilkmay. Xel’s father is the same entity that introduced your planet and its people to some of the foulest concepts and ideas that your fellow humans have ever taken on board.”

“Like what?” I asked.

Reginald rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on, mate, that world of yours is full of them. You must have noticed them?”

“Like?” I asked.

Reginald extricated another flask out of somewhere, fortified himself with all of the contents, and took a deep breath. “Parking wardens. People constantly asking questions and talking throughout a moving picture when if the person just watched the movie their question would be answered. Chargers or adapters that use more than one power socket while blocking two others. Entering a room and forgetting that thing you were supposed to do. When heathen beasts use a public toilet and don’t flush. Mosquitos. Buttholes that never wipe clean. And a fabulously wealthy tribe intent on taking over the world called the Kard—”

“All of that?” I said. “That was all courtesy of Madame Xel’s dad?”

“Well, he has a board of executives who flesh out his ideas,” Madame Xel said.

I shook my head. I would revisit that fascinating topic of conversation later, but as for now, there was more to sort out.

“Come on, Madame Xel,” I said, “there must be a way to convince him to help us.”

“We shall see how easy that proves to be,” Madame Xel said. “I think one thing is for certain though.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“You’ll be coming with me,” Madame Xel said with a wink. Then she began to saunter away, back toward the line that had formed by the cauldron being presided over by Leah and Enwyn.

“I must go and check a few things,” Mallory said hurriedly. “If Madame Xel and Justin are going to be heading into the Infernal Realms, preparations must be made. Xel can be… flighty and a little impulsive sometimes. I shall see the two of you later.”

“Indeed you shall!” Reginald called after her merrily. “Hopefully by which time I shall have stopped seeing two of you, Priestess Entwistle!”

I looked over at the Headmaster. He was swaying, but those clever eyes of his looked as sharp and calculating as ever.

Reginald clapped me on the shoulder. “A war with the Arcane Council is one thing,” he said to me, “but going into the heart of the kingdom belonging to the being that makes being bad his business… Into the hot, bubbling madness of the Infernal Realms?” He whistled softly and gave my shoulder a squeeze. “You should tread carefully, Justin, mate. That place is full of fire and death and more bureaucrats than you can shake your staff at. Yes, even accompanied by Madam Xel, I would tread very lightly if I were you.”

I met Reginald’s eye and nodded. Then I gave him an easy smile.

“I can feel once more that bubbling fizz in the pit of my stomach, Headmaster,” I said.

“Bloody hell, you haven’t been ingesting anything given to you by Igor, have you?”

“No, I was referring to the feeling that heralds coming adventure.”

“Ah, adventure! Yes. Far better than and less dangerous than those month old strix salamis that he’s been carrying around in his pockets. But, like I say, tread carefully.”

I gave the Headmaster a reassuring nod and a wink. “When have I ever not trod carefully, sir?

Reginald Chaosbane laughed, clutching his stomach as floating sparks danced out of his ears.

“Ah deary me!” he said. “That’s a fucking good one!”

End of Book 8

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