by Dante King
And you didn’t get yourself into one of those without throwing caution to the winds and putting yourself forward.
The corners of Enwyn’s mouth twitched upward when she saw me stride out of the crowd.
“Ready when you are, Miss Emberskull,” I said.
Enwyn nodded, looked over my shoulder and said, “All right, let’s go.”
Without glancing back at my fraternity brothers, I walked boldly out, and under the archway of the magical doorway. I was half-expecting something weird to happen this time, so I was not surprised when I experienced the sensation of having someone throw a bucket of cold water over me while simultaneously flipping me upside-down. I gasped involuntarily, blinked a few times and, when my vision cleared, I found myself standing on a swathe of knee-high, emerald green grass.
It’s not often that I notice stuff like grass—not the kind that cows eat anyway—but this was the most vividly luscious grass that I had ever set eyes on. It waved in backward and forward in a gentle, soothing breeze and smelled like pure springtime. I breathed the good, green smell deep into my lungs. Then, remembering that this was a magical test and that I should have my head on a swivel, I raised my eyes and looked around me.
“Well,” I said, “you don’t see that every day.”
I was standing on the edge of a vast clearing. Stretching away from me on either side, in a rough oval was a wall of the most exotic, verdant jungle forest that I could ever have imagined. The color scheme consisted of every single hue of green that I think it was possible to come up with, dappled and smeared with the dark browns and gossamer silvers of countless tree trunks. This vegetative pallet was punctuated by bursts of bright color that hit the eyeball like a neon sign in a dive-bar. Electric pink flower blooms, as big as Harley Davidsons, burst from the earth, the perfume of which was as heady as a good wine and could be smelled from fifteen feet away. There were vines and creepers snaking around trunks and adorning enormous tree limbs—cobalt blue, acid yellow and salmon orange—as well as a host of smaller shrubs and plants dotted about among the grass in which I stood.
The jungle was, of course, incredible, but what really drew the eye like a nudist in a church was the temple. I could see, in a heartbeat, why Chaosbane had referred to this place as the Fractured Temple. The Fractured Temple seemed to be made up of a main, central stepped pyramid, constructed of mindbogglingly massive blocks of dark gray stone. Deep purple vines—as thick as a man’s wrist—covered its surface like a spider web of veins. It might have been my imagination, or the way that the light caught them, but it almost looked as if the vines pulsated.
Ranging out from this massive main structure were a series of tumbled down ruins. Initially, I assumed that these scattered blocks had been part of the central pyramid, but on closer inspection I couldn’t make out much significant damage to the main temple. The enormous pieces of debris ranged from house-sized down to merely jeep-sized and got progressively smaller the further away from the main temple they were.
“Makes quite an impression the first time you see it, doesn’t it?” Enwyn said from behind me.
“Just like you,” I said.
“What is that supposed to mean?” an unfamiliar voice said.
I revolved slowly, still soaking up the incredible abundance and variety of plant life that surrounded me, and faced my latest sexual conquest. It turned out that she was not alone. Standing next to her were none other than Cecilia Chillgrave and Janet Thunderstone. Looked to me as if the two other people with the biggest set of balls in our class of new students also happened to have boobs.
My eyes flicked over the two young women; Cecilia, the elven aristocrat, with her blonde hair and ice-chip eyes, sharp features and killer ass. Janet, the daughter of Idman Thunderstone—a man whose reputation preceded him like a grim shadow of foreboding—who was shorter and less willowy than Cecilia but stronger-looking, with hazel eyes and brown hair.
And who, I could not help but recall, I had seen in some seriously compromising positions and in far less clothing than she now wore.
“Ladies,” Enwyn said to the two approaching women. “I believe you are both acquainted with Justin Mauler here.”
Cecilia gave me a piercing look and a smile that was all white teeth and red lips. Somehow, she oozed innocent sexuality without doing a thing. Janet’s face was a picture of stunned surprise and dawning comprehension, as she looked at me.
“I should have known that any chick who moshed as hard as you did at the Iron Maiden concert was bound to have a double backbone,” I said, giving her one of my most disarming smiles.
It was almost like Janet’s thoughts were projecting over her head. I could tell what she was thinking—it was the same thing I’d thought when I’d spotted her sinking that goblet of ale the day before: my random hook-up from an Iron Maiden gig is a mage? What the hell are the odds on that?
Behind the three women, the portal that we had stepped through, and that showed a wavering image of the amphitheater that we had left behind, shimmered and then faded altogether. All of a sudden, our way back to the Academy was gone and I was facing a dense wall of impenetrable-looking rainforest.
“It is you,” Janet said, finally managing to dredge some words out.
“In the flesh, I said, smiling again. “I have to say that you’re looking a lot more, um put together than the last time I saw you.”
I remembered how Janet had looked at the part after the concert, with her wild, post-moshpit hair, smeared make-up and voice hoarse from screaming along to Run to the Hills, The Number of the Beast and The Evil That Men Do.
“Yeah, well, you’re looking a lot more appropriately attired and a lot more conscious than when I last saw you,” Janet fired back, with an attractive little smirk that make me want to take her behind the nearest unidentified bush.
I laughed at this. There could be no doubt about that. After we’d got together, Janet had snuck out the next morning before I was awake.
Who would have thought that the next time we’d speak would be in some other world?
“Do you get to Earth often?” I asked, not bothering about how absurd a question that would have sounded to my own ears only three days ago.
“Only when a band like Iron Maiden are touring,” Janet said.
“You were on Earth?” Cecilia suddenly interjected.
Janet glanced at her and said, “Uh-huh.”
“Tut tut,” Cecilia said.
I frowned. “What’s wrong with going to Earth for a friendly bit of heavy metal?” I asked.
“Because,” Cecilia said, in her cool, even voice, “it’s illegal.”
“Illegal?” I said.
Enwyn stepped forward. “Magical practitioners are only meant to go to Earth if they have been officially sanctioned,” she explained. “An example of that would be me going in my capacity as Admissions Officer.”
I nodded.
“I was officially sanctioned, thank you very much,” Janet said, examining the ends of her shiny brown hair.
“By who? Your father?” Cecilia asked.
The two young women glared at each other. For a few seconds, the only sound was the wind moving through the long grass.
“What’s the point of having connections if you’re not going to make use of them, darling?” she asked venomously.
Was this really going to happen right now? The face-off between two fiery beauties with egos to match their looks? I suppressed a smile. Well, at least I’ve got front row seats.
Then, unexpectedly, Janet snorted and started to laugh. Cecilia cracked up a second later.
Janet looked over at me, those gorgeous hazel eyes of hers glinting mischievously.
“We almost had you, didn’t we, Justin?” she asked.
Cecilia came and lay a hand on her chuckling friend’s shoulder. “He didn’t look like he was buying it to me, babe. Didn’t seem phased at all, for that matter.”
I held out my hands. “Hey, I was just waiting to see if it wa
s the sort of row that could be resolved with a bit of mud wrestling.”
Janet grinned and rolled her eyes, but Cecilia said, “Is that how women end disputes back in your world?”
Somehow, I kept my face dead straight and said, “Oh, yeah, that’s the standard way to settle arguments.”
Unfortunately, before this banter could take a turn in an even naughtier direction, Enwyn stepped forward and clapped her hands to capture our attention.
“All right, all right,” the Gothic older woman said, “do you three want to hear why we’re here or not?”
Despite the two paragons of womanly virtue in front of me, I suddenly became all-ears.
“What’s the deal?” I asked.
Enwyn cleared her throat, she reached into an interior pocket of her dress, pulled out a pair of devastatingly bad-ass sunglasses and swapped for her regular spectacles.
“Right. Basically, the rest of your class will have been divided up by now and paired with an Induction Overseer—an IO for short. I am your IO, is that understood?”
The three of us nodded.
I looked at the suddenly stern and concentrated faces of the stunning chicks next to me. I couldn’t help but wonder if my frat brothers had managed to get as lucky as me on the hot chick front. I doubted it. More than likely they would have divided into pairs and taken on a random person to make up their three.
“Does anyone know anything about the Fractured Temple?” Enwyn asked.
Janet raised a hand and said, “It’s part of a world which the Stone Elementals used to inhabit. That was, of course, until the Void Wars when they were all wiped out on this particular world.”
Enwyn nodded. “That’s right. The Void Wars are to blame for the death of the Stone Elementals, as well as the destruction that you can see all around you. There used to be two temples here, but one was completely obliterated by a joint spell that backfired. The temples aren’t as old as they look. It’s just that they’ve been overtaken by the sheer profusion of plant life. There is no intelligent life here. Not anymore. Only flora and fauna.”
“So, why are we here?” I asked. I had thought that we might be on some sort of rescue mission or something along those lines.”
“All your classmates and IOs have been transported to this world, scattered among the landscape. Headmaster Chaosbane has tasked each team with a particular objective. Complete this objective and we get to go back to the Academy.”
“And if we don’t?” Janet asked.
Enwyn didn’t answer.
“What’s our objective?” I asked. The thought of what would happen if we failed never entered my thinking. All I wanted to do was get cracking and, hopefully, show these three the sort of handle that I already had on my spells.
“Our task,” Enwyn said, unbuttoning her cuffs and turning the sleeves of her dress up, “is to obtain the bioluminescent tail feathers of a Fern-tailed Cockatrice.”
“A Fern-tailed-what-the-fuck-now?” I asked, before I could stop myself.
Enwyn sighed, walked over and put a hand on my chest. A hot tingle ran across the muscles and across my shoulders.
“We’re going hunting,” she said. “I’ll point out the creature when we see it. It will be up to the three of you to bring it down and collect the tail feathers.”
I nodded. Sounded simple enough, and we were going to get to use magic and take down some exotic magical beast. I was sold. I pointed toward the jungle. “Fern-tailed, you said, so I’m assuming whatever the hell it is we’re looking for lives in there?”
Enwyn nodded.
I looked across at the other two chicks. Janet was emulating Enwyn and rolling up the sleeves of the leather coat that she wore, as far as she was able. Cecilia looked a little less keen on the idea of traipsing through an overgrown rainforest.
She clucked her tongue and held one perfectly manicured hand to Janet. “And I just had my nails hex-etched too.”
Janet made a commiserating noise in her throat, pulled an over-the-top glum face and gave her friend an amiable smack on the rump as she walked after Enwyn.
We walked away from the shattered temples and into the edge of the forest.
“Everyone set?” Enwyn asked. “Everyone got their vectors at the ready?”
My vector!
In the space of time that it took this thought to form, my staff appeared in my hand. I guessed alternate worlds and millions of miles didn’t matter when it came to vectors. It appeared that these magical conduits didn’t play by the same rules—you know, those pesky ones that govern space and time—that mere mortals did. I gave my staff a pat and the orb at its tip glowed a soft white as if to return the gesture. I wondered if I should give the staff a name.
Woody? Longfellow? Ash? Rod?
I decided I’d have to put some serious thought into it, maybe at a more appropriate time.
After we had gone only twenty or so meters into the jungle, the trees seemed to close in around us and we were engulfed in a world of moist greenery. Sunlight filtered through the leaves above—great stabbing bars of golden light that looked solid enough to cut. Myriad insects buzzed and droned through the air; beetles of numerous, incandescent shades, flies that glittered like rubies and, a couple of times, I thought some sort of flying frog might have zipped across my field of vision. The air was hot and still and breathless. There was a tense expectancy hanging in the air like vapor, and this prickled against my skin. My eyes strained for any sign of a fern-like tail among the mass of foliage, for anything that might be the Cockatrice.
“What does this thing look like?” I whispered, coming close up behind Enwyn. She turned to look at me. The jungle is funny like that, you automatically talk in whispers and muted tones, like you do in a museum, art gallery or library–only, in the jungle, it’s nature that is putting on the exhibition and providing the knowledge.
“You’ll know it when you see it,” she replied.
“Oh, yeah, how’s that?”
“Because it’ll try to kill you.”
The four of us were moving in a tight group, deeper into the forest. There was no sign of a path that I could see, and I wondered briefly whether Enwyn knew where she was going? Was she looking for some sort of spore, or did she have a general idea about what sort of environment this Cockatrice thing liked to inhabit?
We’d been walking for fifteen minutes or so, when Enwyn stopped and bent over to examine something in the leaf litter. As I was following close behind her, and my eyes were on the surrounding trees, I bumped into her—my crotch straight into her backside.
“Shit,” I said, looking down. I smiled at the look that Enwyn gave me. The crook of her mouth said it all. “Are you suddenly getting a severe case of dèjà vu?” I asked.
The snapping of a twig behind us made us both look around. Janet was standing there, giving as a fairly intrigued look.
“What did you just mean by that?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Bullshit.”
Luckily, Enwyn had us covered. She pointed down at the thing that she had been studying. “Not quite bullshit,” she said, “but along those lines certainly.”
“Ew,” Cecilia said, coming over, “is that poop?”
“Yes, it is,” Enwyn affirmed.
To my surprise, Janet knelt down and stuck a finger into the lumpy, yellow-green nugget.
“Still warm,” she said, as if she had been hunting magical beasts ever since she was knee-high to a grasshopper.
“Oh, gods, Janet,” Cecilia said, wrinkling her pretty nose, “you did not just stick your finger into that piece of fecal matter.”
“Come on,” Enwyn said, her head moving slowly in an ark. “Our quarry isn’t far away.”
I felt a thrill of excitement as we continued on our way, moving with a touch more stealth than we had previously. Mentally, I ran through my spells. I wondered what one would be most suited to bringing this Cockatrice thing down.
After another cautious ten minute
s, there was the unmistakable cracking groan of something fairly large moving through the brush ahead of us. We stopped in our tracks and listened as, whatever it was, snapped through a grove of saplings.
“Alright, Justin,” Enwyn said, “I want you in front of me on your knees—”
It was beyond my abilities to ignore an opening like that, no matter what the situation. “You know you don’t have to tell me,” I hissed, “just grab my hair and force me down.”
Enwyn bit her lip in an attempt to stop an unstoppable smile.
“Oh, come on,” Janet said from where she was leaning against the bole of a tree. “Now I get it. You guys have fucked, haven’t you?”
I said nothing—being the consummate gentleman—but the look on my face must have been enough of an answer.
“Ha, I knew it!” whispered Janet. Far from looking pissed off, as I thought that she might, she looked amused.
Enwyn started to stutter a reply, but Janet cut her off. “Hey, I’m not blaming you, Enwyn. I mean, Justin’s certainly got his charms.” She dropped me a lascivious wink.
Enwyn looked at me, back to Janet and then back at me. “That’s how you came across your Storm Mage abilities,” she whispered to me, the light of comprehension stealing across her face. She kept her voice low so Janet and Cecilia wouldn’t hear her, so I guessed she didn’t want them to know that I was a Creation Mage. I figured it was a secret I could keep, at least for a little while.
I shrugged. “Iron Maiden and cheap tequila,” I said, loud enough so the other women could hear. “It’s like the common man’s chocolate and oysters.”
“I can’t believe you just called me common,” Janet said, a mock pout on her lips.
