Metal Mage 8

by Eric Vall

  The rune was already half finished healing my skin, and I clenched my jaw as I took deep breaths and waited for the process to finish. The pain wasn’t nearly so bad as it had been at first, but the sensation of my skin trying to reform itself was tight and uncomfortable in a way that reminded me of burnt cheese for some reason.

  Then Pindor came around fully and probably noticed me laying a foot away with half my flesh boiled.

  “No!” he yelped in panic. “I-I got you killed? Noooo”

  “I’m alive,” I mumbled through my gritted teeth. “Calm down and give me a minute.”

  “What the … shit!” he gasped, and the kid dropped down beside me with his heart slamming loudly in my ears. “Are you--should I get Shoshanne? I could go to the Oculus! Or the king! The king’s not gonna talk to me, shit! I just got you killed, right? I’m so fucked.”

  “Shut up,” I ordered. “Be quiet for two goddamn seconds, and I’ll be fine.”

  “Totally,” Pindor panted. “I’ll be quiet. But you’re like … mutilated. What if--”

  “Shut up,” I ordered once more.

  The runes were viciously countering the worst of the burns on my hands, and the last thing I needed was a mental image of the damage to add to the uncomfortable process. At the same time, I was mostly relieved to feel more than half my body was renewed already, and I tried to focus on how fucking awesome rune magic was rather than the scene I’d stumbled into out here.

  To be honest, seeing Pindor practically dead had just about stopped my own damn heart, regardless of his most recent bullshit. To his credit, he was at least twice as riled by my own state.

  Pindor must have noticed my flesh was healing itself, though, because his breaths suddenly became shallow and frantic, and he shot backward across the ground.

  “What’s happening?” Pindor demanded. “What … are you …”

  I sighed with relief as the last of my flesh settled into place, and the runes finally began to quiet down enough for me to speak again.

  “I told you to shut up,” I reminded Pindor. “Are you okay?”

  “I mean … no,” the kid admitted. “I hurt a lot. What just happened? Are you okay? I can’t breathe.”

  “Yes, you can,” I assured him, and I strained to stand. “Stop thinking so much and focus on calming down. You’re alive. I’m alive.”

  Pindor was clutching at his hair and staring at me like I was a walking ghost, but he also had a shoulder jutting out at a grotesque angle, so I tackled this first.

  “What the hell are you doing out here?” I asked the kid as I stooped to set his shoulder back into the socket. When I gave a firm shove, the joint popped loudly into place, and Pindor yelped in pain.

  “I just … your skin was--”

  I sighed. “This guy I know branded me with a rune to help me heal at an accelerated rate. Don’t overthink it. Your turn.”

  Pindor rubbed at his shoulder with a blank expression for a minute, but when he finally answered my question, he mumbled so I couldn’t understand a word of it.

  “What was that?” I clarified.

  “I was meeting someone, alright?” Pindor admitted. “Go on, be a judgmental prick.”

  I tried not to grin. “Hey, I don’t knock fucking in the woods. I just think you’re a cocky shit lately, that’s all. Two different things.”

  I expected another come back, but Pindor continued fidgeting with his shoulder in silence. Then he worked to stand up, and I gave him a hand.

  “I know I’m a cocky shit,” he mumbled as he winced and brushed the leaves off him. “I haven’t been lately, though.”

  I raised a brow. “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  I nodded. “Who’s the girl, then?”

  “A friend of yours, actually,” he told me. “She’s a Tenebrae Mage.”

  He puffed out his chest a bit as he said this, but I couldn’t help dropping my jaw as the hair on my arms stood straight up, and all I could think of was the image of Onym smiling to himself just before a dagger pierced his heart.

  “You’re not talking about Baroness Batonova, are you?” I asked uneasily. “Please tell me that’s not who you’re meeting out here.”

  Pindor looked insulted. “So what if I am?”

  “You’re fifteen!” I cut-in. “She’s … I don’t even know how old she is, but she’s old enough to be a Baroness. What are you doing?”

  “I’m sixteen now, and who cares?” he tried. “She’s hot, and she didn’t ask.”

  “No,” I corrected, and I leveled the kid with a stern finger.

  Pindor looked uneasily at it before he eyed the dead mages around us, and then he managed to look Big Guy in his glowing eyes for the briefest second. His lips wavered on a rebuttal, but I interrupted before he could even try it.

  “No.”

  Pindor sighed. “But we didn’t do anything!”

  “Nooo,” I groaned. “Listen. Find a nice girl your own damn age, stop being a creep, and never sleep with mages who could murder you while you can’t even see them standing there.”

  “Wh--what?” Pindor gasped, and his eyes went wide with terror.

  “Yeah, Tenebrae Mage,” I said with a nod. “I’ve seen her do it. The other guy thought she was pretty hot, too, but she’s way more than that. She can fade into shadows, she can blind you, make you deaf, and even make anyone impossible to trace if she wants to. You don’t know what you’re fucking with here, Pindor. Stop fucking with it.”

  Pindor nodded vigorously, and I finally lowered my hand.

  “Okay,” I sighed. “Now, what does she want with you?”

  “Well, like I mentioned--”

  “Don’t flatter yourself, the Baroness is always working an angle,” I assured him. “You were with us when we brought the train through Rajeene, so she could have recognized you. How did you two meet here?”

  “At the pub in Serin. She came up to me and we started chatting. Then she kept buying me drinks, and I figured … ” The kid shrugged.

  “You’re telling me a Tenebrae Mage, who’s a rich Baroness, spent time with you at a bar, and then started flirting with you and buying your drinks, and you didn’t think there was anything suspicious going on?” I groaned. “Her eyes alone should be enough to tell you that you’re in over your head.”

  “I know,” Pindor sighed, and as he ruffled his hair, I fought the urge to flatten it back down so he didn’t look so much like me. “I just thought she was interested. She was really flirting and was touching me on my shoulder. She has his really sexy voice and her eyes--”

  “Yeah,” I scoffed. “She’s like a wolf, and you are a dumb bunny. Stick to nice girls, okay?”

  “I will,” he assured me, “I swear. I’ll be a better Pindor.”

  “We’ll see,” I muttered before I turned to Big Guy. “Thanks for the save, buddy. Do me a favor and get all these bodies in that trench over there. I’ll seal it up for you when it’s done. Then you can carry on with your patrol, but remember we’ve got some training to do this afternoon.”

  Big Guy gave a salute and dutifully set to work burying the dead mages, and I motioned for Pindor to follow me back to the village.

  I trained my ear to the woods surrounding us as we went, but I couldn’t hear any sign of another mage present. After I sifted carefully through the soil and was sure there was no one lurking around in the shadows, I nudged the kid at my side.

  “When was the last time you talked to the Baroness?” I asked in a low voice.

  “Yesterday,” he replied. “She was waiting for me outside the Oculus when I was headed into the market.”

  “Does she always wait there for you?”

  “No, that’s the first time I’ve seen her there, well I’ve only seen her twice. Once at the bar and then on the street. I thought she said to meet her here when she walked off, but I couldn’t quite tell, so I figured I’d come and check since she really is outrageously hot, and it really seemed like she was interested in me at the p
ub.”

  “Then she must know something about you,” I sighed. Part of me wanted to yell at him more for getting caught up in the Baroness’ obvious manipulations, but I could also understand where he was coming from. The woman was seductively beautiful and exotic. She just oozed sexuality, and Pindor was pretty much an idiot with women. “What have you been doing since you left Orebane?”

  Pindor sent me another awkward glance.

  “Besides that,” I muttered. “Who’s been teaching you? What friends have you made?”

  “I was meeting with Wyresus every other day for lessons, but he’s such a jerk I finally just stopped going,” Pindor said with a shrug. “He won’t teach me anything without making me read ten volumes first, and I suck at reading. He kept making fun of me, so I tried to get a Defender to mentor me, but the only ones I could find already hate me.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because I’ve slept with their little sisters. Or their friends’ little sisters, or their little sisters’ friends … ”

  I snorted and shook my head. “Yeah, word tends to get around,” I told him. “Another reason to not be a shit. What have you been doing since then?”

  “I just mess around, I guess,” he admitted, and he sounded like he regretted this. “I practice what you taught me, but I can’t do much more than make trenches and lift boulders. It’s pretty boring, honestly. I wish I was an Ignis Mage or something cooler.”

  I had to chuckle.

  “Terra Magic is tricky,” I told him. “It’s not all messing with dirt and rocks. There’s a finesse to it. You have to practice being deeply in tune with your element if you’re ever going to get to the next level. Focus on connecting with it completely, and if you’re doing it right, there’s no divide between you and your element anymore.”

  Pindor’s eyes gleamed as he nodded along. “I can do that.”

  I realized the kid was practically starving for any kind of instruction, and I couldn’t deny he was already more promising than a lot of the mages we were training back at the village. So, I sighed and came to a stop outside the house as I considered him.

  “Look, I’ll teach you a bit alright?” I finally said, and his familiar old grin spread from ear to ear. “But I’ve also got a mission I need you to help me out with.”

  “Anything,” Pindor promised wholeheartedly. “You just saved my life back there. And got burned alive. And I know I’ve been an asshole. I want to make it up to you.”

  I snorted and did another careful scan of the surrounding area before I continued, and once I was sure no one was around, I motioned for him to come a little closer.

  “The Baroness has been claiming me as her friend for a while,” I told him quietly, “but I’ve had enough strange run ins with her to question what team she’s on. You’re gonna help me figure it out.”

  “Yeah, but I thought you said--”

  “Not by trying to get with her,” I clarified with a roll of my eyes. “By any other means necessary. Watch your back, though, and don’t let her catch on that you’re fishing around for information, alright? She’s an incredibly dangerous woman, and she’s used to running around with people way more brutally minded than you. That means you have to play into whatever her reason is for talking to you, and pretend you want to get to know her better. Tell her no one will teach you, that’s a good start. Let her know you’re kind of a loner and need someone to hang out with. Ask her personal stuff. What she does, where she goes, who her friends are. This last one’s important. Remember every name, and if she ever mentions Nalnora, find out why she went there, and ask her specifically who she visited. This is a test. I wanna know if she’s lying to you, so remember her answers explicitly, alright?”

  “Deal,” Pindor agreed. “It’s kind of funny, because she was asking me a lot of these same things about you at the pub that first time, but what if she catches on that I’m turning the tables on her?”

  I stared. “Wait, she was? What did you say?”

  “She kep buying me ale, so I was pretty drunk by then,” he admitted. “I told her I had no idea what you were up to, because you were in Nalnora, and it was true. I did tell her you had some dwarven friends up north, though, and the huge lumber guys in Garioch liked you. Pretty much just that anywhere we took the railway ended up liking you because duh, but I also may have sort of implied you were my uh …”

  “Your what?” I asked as the kid refused to meet my gaze.

  “My best friend, I guess,” he mumbled. “It’s cool though, she didn’t seem to believe me at all, and it was stupid, and I was drunk so we can pretend I never said it.”

  I did an admirable job of not laughing and cleared my throat instead. “Well that’s a hiccup in the plan, but not hard to fix. She tends to pay attention, so there’s a good chance she already knows you ended up on my shit list for a while there. Play that up when you see her again. Tell her I brushed you off, that my women tried to set you on fire, the whole deal. This does mean you’re gonna have to make sure she never sees you with me, though. If you think she might be catching on, even if you’re not sure, figure out a legitimate excuse and get the hell gone. Stay away from shadows and dark corners, and get a raven to me in Falmount so we can arrange to meet up. Just do everything you can to make her think you’re as alone as you were when I got back to town.”

  Pindor grimaced at this. “That sounds so pathetic.”

  “It is,” I agreed. “So, maybe you could clear a few things up for me. How is it you sleep around so much for the month I’ve been gone, and now everyone including their families want to kill you?”

  “I don’t know,” Pindor mumbled. “I might sweet talk them a bit, make promises I don’t keep. A couple of them were mad because I gave them an honest rating, and a few times I … ”

  I raised my brows as he trailed off, and I stubbornly waited him out until he continued.

  “A few times,” Pindor finally admitted, “I might have left before they were finished, but only because they weren’t that good at it, and I was bored.”

  “You didn’t tell them that.”

  He really didn’t need to answer. The look on his face was a solid yes.

  There were about five points I wanted to clear up right there, but I wasn’t in the mood to give the kid any more advice at the moment.

  So, I locked my jaw and reminded myself once more how shitty it would be to punch a kid while I tried to focus on the fact that apparently him living or dying mattered to me, regardless of his terrible decisions.

  Then I calmly ordered Pindor not to tell anyone what had just occurred in the forest and to get back to Serin.

  The kid was about to hop to when Jenik came around the side of the house with a grin much like Pindor’s on his face.

  “Hey Mason,” he said cheerily. “I just finished up at the pub, and I grabbed my dad’s sword in case you wanted to see it. It’s probably not as cool as yours, but … ”

  Jenik handed the sword over expectantly, and then he sent Pindor a nod in greeting.

  “This is Jenik,” I explained as I took stock of the stout blade. “He’s my squire.”

  “He’s your squire?” Pindor scoffed. “I thought I was your squire.”

  I furrowed my brow and glanced up. “You don’t wanna be a knight.”

  “Yeah, but you trained me,” Pindor countered. “I’m your mage squire, and have been for a while now, technically.”

  The look the two kids exchanged immediately brought me back to my high school days, and I tried not to smirk as I interceded.

  “Alright, Pindor,” I said. “If you wanna be my squire too, you can be one, but you’re taking an oath.”

  “I’ll take an oath,” he said at once, and the kid straightened up so the two inches of height he had on Jenik would be good and clear.

  Jenik rolled his eyes.

  “Pindor,” I began, “in order to serve as my squire, you will adhere to the following oath: under no circumstance will you ever tie another woman
to a bed unless you are fully prepared to deliver what she’s looking for. Repeat that back to me, and the job is yours.”

  “Wait,” Jenik cut in. “That was you?”

  Pindor shifted awkwardly, but he tried to hold his own. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean Mina,” Jenik clarified, and he turned to face Pindor straight on. “She’s a friend of mine. You’re the jerk who left her tied to a bed?”

  I knew what was coming next before Pindor had even finished blushing beet red, but he definitely didn’t expect it. So, when Jenik punched him square in the jaw, he staggered several paces back and only barely looked up in time to block the next hit. Then the two were at it like mad cats, and as they dropped to the dirt in a knot of lanky limbs, I decided they could work this one out themselves.

  I took the extremely nice sword with me while I headed for the house, just in case, and as I settled back to work in the shop, I scruffed my hair irritably.

  The day had admittedly taken a sour turn there for a second, and I only hoped to all of the gods that none of the Defenders I just swore my own oath to would find out about the four mages I killed. Especially given that it was all in the name of Pindor, the kid a few of them probably wanted to skin alive for their sisters’ sakes.

  Two hours into this agreement, and I was already treading a dangerous line, but I didn’t regret it. I’d felt the force of those mages’ powers, and with my life and Pindor’s in the balance, I knew I’d done the right thing, even if it didn’t fall strictly in line with what the Defender’s had in mind.

  With a long sigh, I sent my Terra Magic to the western woods to seal the trench of bodies over, and then I pulled the blow guns over to finish the final detail on the snatcher to my right.

  Chapter 19

  Big Guy’s eerie blue eyes lit up in the darkening trees, and I waited with my sword in hand. My head pounded from the noise of the runes, but I wasn’t stopping until I got this right.

  The machine’s steel plating had just finished reforming for the fourth time since we began our training, but I almost had it in our last match. My vision narrowed, my rune was agitated like a war cry in my ears, but I wasn’t going to tear Big Guy to shreds. I was going to lock him in the ground, but then he raised the crossbow in my direction, and in a flash, I obliterated him before he could even loose the arrow.