by Dante King
“Am I the only one here who hasn’t slept with Justin?” Cecilia chimed in.
“Hey, that’s easy enough to remedy,” I replied.
There was a deafening roar that cut off our chat in mid-joke. It was the furious screeching bellow of an animal that has caught sight or scent of another animal in its territory and is not happy about it.
“Ready yourself!” Enwyn said, all traces of humor gone from her face.
The Cockatrice launched itself out of the undergrowth and twenty feet up a tree. It stuck to the trunk like a gecko, only instead of suction pads at the end of its toes it sported some pretty lethal-looking foot-long claws. They were the same color as tree sap, and I was willing to bet my left nut that they were horribly poisonous. The creature itself looked, essentially like a two-legged dragon, as big as a cart horse, with the head of a reptilian bird. The ragged crest that sprouted from its forehead had a definite rooster comb quality to it. Its wings were small and looked quite useless to me. Sure enough, its tail ended in a series of quite beautiful, organic-looking ferny feathers.
“We need the tail-ferns for a number of potions and elixirs back at the Academy,” Enwyn said, her eyes riveted on the beast. “Now, go to work!”
I was the first off the mark and had fired a Storm Bolt at the creature while it sat, crooning to itself in the tree. With the reflexes of a cricket, it bounded off the tree trunk and my Storm Bolt sheared the bole in half, sending the tree crashing to the forest floor.
“I’ve got it,” yelled Cecilia. She swept her arm around and a rain of icy needles sprayed out toward the Cockatrice, but the creature was too agile and bounded from tree to tree like a cat might leap from chimney to chimney. It roared again, as Cecilia’s needles shredded the canopy overhead and a rain of perforated leaves spiraled down. Within a few seconds the magical beast would be among us and, with those claws, I didn’t much fancy everyone making it out alive.
Those dusty old fart politicians back on earth could say what they liked about the culture of video games, and the tendency they had for promoting violence in our societies, but I’m pretty sure if it was my love of first-person shooters that honed the hand-eye coordination that enabled me to save Cecilia’s life.
The Cockatrice made it to the last tree and then launched itself at the willowy elf maiden.
I tracked it with my hand, as it made its final, terminal spring and then, summoning my will, I let loose with a concentrated Fireball ever so slightly ahead of my moving target. The Fireball shot across the intervening space, growing to its full size in under a second. It punched into the side of the Cockatrice’s neck with a dull thud. Flame splashed across the animal’s side and it spun in the air like it had just been hit by a truck. The creature smashed into a sapling, spun again and crashed out of sight. From the way that its screeches carried up to us, it sounded like it had fallen down a long slope.
“Nice—nice work, Justin,” Cecilia stammered as I ran past her.
I sprinted to the edge of the slope, but the vegetation was so thick that I couldn’t see any sign of the Cockatrice. Then, from what sounded like a fair distance, I heard a thin, mournful wail. It sounded again, and then faded.
“Sounds like you killed it, Justin,” Enwyn said, coming to stand next to me.
I nodded. I could feel the adrenaline coursing through my body. I felt god-like. That had been exactly the sort of shit that I had imagined learning magic would involve.
“Now, we just have to go down there and retrieve its tail, right?” I asked.
Enwyn’s hand, which had been resting on my shoulder, slipped down a little lower.
“That’s right,” she said. “Let’s go.”
Janet brushed past me, and I wondered at that because there was plenty of space for her to go around.
We pushed our way down the slope, crashing through the branches of encroaching trees and hopping over fallen logs. Our spirits, naturally, were through the fucking roof. I doubt there are many legal highs that compare to having an angry Cockatrice bearing down on you, only to blast it out of the air at the last minute, and I was feeling extremely stoked with myself. It wasn’t just the whole saving another person’s life thing that had me jacked up, it was the knowledge that I was actually pretty good at this magic thing.
It was a shock to me then, when I led our group through a dense clump of bracken—following the trail of destruction that the dying Cockatrice had left in its wake—and ran headlong into a group of trolls.
I may not have ever seen a troll outside of an illustrated children’s book, but I could tell instantly that that is what these guys were. Anyone could have guessed that that was what they were. They were big, beefy, dull blue motherfuckers, with rings through their noses, ears, and lips. They were about seven feet tall, broad, with long, muscular arms and basically no neck.
I pushed myself out of the bracken and into the clearing that their group were standing in. The three gorgeous women followed behind me. Immediately, the trolls’ piggy little eyes swiveled as one to stare at me.
“Ah,” said Enwyn as she stepped out of the brush, behind the off-guard Cecilia and Janet.
“Is that an ‘Ah’ as in, ‘Ah, my old, blue friends,’ or an ‘Ah’ as in, ‘Ah, fucksticks’?” I asked.
There was a lot of finger-pointing on their side, a lot of scowls and quite enough leers in the direction of the women for me to realize that the intentions of this band of trolls was anything but honorable.
“The second one,” Enwyn said, out of the corner of her mouth.
The trolls were muttering darkly among themselves and hefting their rifles.
“Wait, these guys have fucking guns?” I asked.
“Mana-rifles,” Enwyn said. “They fire unrefined magic projectiles from a reservoir under the barrel.”
In spite of the fact that every sense in my body was telling me that these weapons of theirs were going to be pointing our way soon enough, I still couldn’t help but be interested in them. I ran my eyes over the one nearest to me, held in the claws of a big brute who was so scarred up he looked like he sorted tigers for a living. The rifle was the same basic shape and size as the weapons on earth only, instead of a magazine, there was a cylindrical glass canister underneath. This was filled with an opaque blue substance that I took to be unrefined magic. I looked about and saw that some of the other trolls had pistols of a similar design tucked into the bands of their loincloths, and a few even had grenade-type baubles hanging from leather straps at their waists.
Without even speaking, the four of us had formed a rough square, our backs pressed together so that we could see danger coming from all angles. Next to me, Enwyn had pulled a stone from her pocket. She fiddled with it, but the next moment thrust it back into her pocket with a curse.
“Shit,” she said, “Chaosbane wasn’t messing around. He’s blocked the return portal until we’ve completed our task.
“Not a man to do things half-assed,” I said.
Like me.
I planted my feet and gripped my staff in both hands.
Then, to my annoyance, just as I was thinking about getting the party started, there was a noise from behind us. Another group of trolls lumbered into the clearing. They came straight up to us and started yelling at the other trolls in a throaty language that sounded like it hurt to speak.
“They’re trying to figure out how to decide who gets the honor of turning us in to the shaman,” Enwyn muttered, her brow creasing in confusion as she listened to the trolls arguing. “And which band gets to keep which of the women as...sex slaves.”
Cecilia wrinkled her nose at this. “Oh, no thank you,” she said with devastating distaste.
“What are our options?” I asked, keeping my eyes on the distracted trolls in front of me.
“I think we left our options in the bushes behind us,” Enwyn said.
I gave her a quick glance and winked. “That makes things easy then.”
My hand shot out and grabbed the mana-pisto
l from the belt of the troll in front of me. Before he could so much as grunt in astonishment, I’d pressed the barrel to the underside of his jaw and pulled the trigger twice for good measure. The pistol kicked slightly and made a subdued fizzing sound, and the top of the troll's skull exploded like an erupting volcano. Dark blue brains rained down on the stunned assembly.
The next bolt of magic went through the throat of a troll a few feet away, leaving a hole in the back of his neck through which I could see the verdant forest behind him. He collapsed as if he’d been lopped off at the knees.
The girls were sharp. They reacted to my lead in a second, clearing a quick circle around us. Cecilia made a quick hand gesture, turning her wand into a spear that resembled a giant icicle. This punched through the guts of the troll in front of her, causing him to double over. She wrenched it free, spilling troll intestines all over the ground, rolled over his back and impaled the troll behind right through his face. As she twisted the ice spear out of his ruined head, she gave a bloodthirsty cry of glee and whipped about to face her next enemy.
The sight of her wielding that spear, her face sprinkled with indigo troll blood and an eleven battle-cry on her lips, pulled at all the parts of me that had been so interested in Enwyn the night before.
What a woman!
“Scatter!” I yelled, seeing that the trolls were recovering from their surprise and swinging their weapons around to bear on us. “Keep moving! They might hit some of their own!”
I dropped the pistol as a club sailed down and cracked it out of my hands. I parried the next blow, dodged aside and rammed the tip of my staff into a troll kneecap and popped it out. The troll went down howling and I smashed his teeth in with the staff. Then I was off and running, dodging through the mess of trolls as they tried vainly to get their heads around the fact that they were getting their asses handed to them.
I vaulted a huge fallen tree and ducked into cover, just as a handful of the more switched on trolls let loose with their mana-rifles. Wood exploded around me as the mana bolts chewed into the fallen trunk. I scrambled along the horizontal tree, as my world was reduced to splinters around me and strips of bark and mulched timber rained down. I rolled out of cover and darted across a piece of open space, the ground behind me erupting in clods of dirt and shredded grass.
Over to my left, I caught sight of Enwyn peppering a quartet of advancing club-wielding trolls with miniature fireballs, forcing them into a tight group. With a practiced flick of her wrist she walled the four trolls in with an advanced version of Flame Barrier and spread a dome over them. Another gesture and the transparent flames turned blue and, as I ducked a stream of mana bolts that fizzled over my head, I saw the trolls within the dome combust, shrieking, their flesh melting from their bones.
On impulse, I sprinted back toward the milling trolls. One turned toward me, and I swept my staff in his direction. I cast a Paralyzing Zap, but instead of the spell paralyzing him, the blow to the side of his head was so hard that it popped his eyeball clean out of its socket. I was past him before he had a chance to realize just how seriously he was going to need a doctor. A trio of trolls turned, just before I was within striking range. They leveled their rifles at me and fired. My own Flame Barrier appeared in front of me in the time it took me to imagine it being there. The mana bolts smacked, sizzling, into it, orange cracks running across the flaming shield as the trolls emptied their reservoirs. While they were busy reenacting Rambo, their attention glued on the obstacle they were so intent on destroying, I’d already slipped around the side of the barrier and pulled the pin of one of the mana-grenades that hung from a thong at one of their waists.
The explosion was a doozy. The grenade went off with a sound like someone scrunching the world’s biggest handful of bubble-wrap—a thousand little explosions that formed a greater bang. That bigger bang was wrapped in a neon blue-white particle cloud of expanding gases that was really quite beautiful in a way. The troll whose grenade it had been vaporized, his head shooting off through the tree canopy like a gory champagne cork. His two pals were shredded and flung away, their blood and innards spraying across those trolls standing nearby.
Janet used my little diversion to unleash her take on a Lightning Skink. Hers was, admittedly a lot smaller than mine had been—I assumed that was because she was a lower level mage than I was, maybe—but still proved effective. It seemed incapable of actually killing the trolls, but every time is ripped at one with its claws the troll would go down like it had been hit with a taser, giving someone else time to come in and finish it off.
“Fall back to the ruins!” Enwyn cried.
“Where the fuck are they?” I asked. I fired a couple of Storm Bolts toward a few of the remaining trolls and they threw themselves into the cover of some boulders.
“Follow me!” Enwyn cried.
We crashed our way back up the slope and through the forest, turning every now and again to deal with the persistent trolls that were intent on following and capturing us.
“That’s cute,” I said to Janet, nodding toward her Lightning Skink. “I have one myself, but it’s a little...meaner.”
Janet cocked her eyebrow at me. “You want to see mean, Earth-boy?”
She gestured at her smaller Skink and then pointed toward a couple of trolls who, at that moment, opened fire with their rifles at us. I grabbed Janet and hauled her behind a tree as the mana-bolts pulverized the shrubbery around us, small branches and bird nests blown into confetti under the onslaught. I peeked around the trunk just in time to see the cat-sized Lightning Skink open its mouth and spit a crackling sphere of energy at one of the trolls. The lumbering blue bastard froze and jerked on the spot, dropped its rifle and then spasmed so hard that I heard its spine break from where I was standing.
“Whoa!” I yelled. “Not bad!”
The Lightning Skink growled and then winked out of existence, spent. I grabbed Janet by the arm, and we dashed after the others.
The last troll was in front of us now. It looked to be intent on running down Cecilia who was sprinting along ahead of it.
Cecilia pirouetted as she ran and sprayed out a handful of those ice needles that I’d seen her use before. Most missed, but some lodged in the troll's legs, instantly turning its legs into Popsicles and gluing it in place. As Janet and I ran past, I swiped at the paralyzed troll’s legs and shattered both of them below the knee. The troll roared in anguish, frozen blood crystals littering the forest floor.
And then, just like that, we burst out into the welcome sunshine. The four of us ran well away from the edge of the rainforest and pulled up, panting hard, right next to the doorway of the stepped pyramid.
“Damn!” I said, sucking air in through my nose in great gulps. “I know we haven’t completed our task yet, but that was fun!”
“You’re crazy,” Cecilia said, but there was a definite note of admiration in her voice.
“I’m glad you thought that was fun,” Enwyn said. She was looking above her head to where the air had started to shimmer and crackle. Her face had drained of color. “Because they were just the entree. Here comes the main course.”
A portal opened in the air. A hole cut out of the very sky itself. A troll shaman, riding on the back of a saber-toothed tiger–at least that’s what my mind labeled it—leapt through the magical doorway and thudded to the ground.
Before any of us could do a thing, the shaman, who was dressed in feathers and bones and smeared with bloody warpaint, waved a staff of his own and we were instantly stuck as solidly as if we’d been encased in cement.
“Well, this isn’t part of the plan I assume?” Cecilia said, her voice all icy aristocratic calm.
“No,” Enwyn said. “Not part of my plan anyway.”
The shaman slid down from his awesome, prehistoric mount, patted it casually and smiled at us. This was impressive in itself, seeing as he only had two yellow tusks doing the job of a mouthful of teeth.
“But,” he said, “it is part of my plan.�
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He was a bandy-legged prick, with a face like the back end of bad luck.
He caught me staring daggers at him and grinned wider.
“Well, well, if it isn’t the man I sent my grunts to find,” he said.
I frowned but didn’t let him know that he had me flummoxed. “I hope you didn’t want them back,” I replied. “There’s probably enough left on them to scoop into a bucket, if you have one handy.”
The shaman chuckled. “You certainly have the ego of a Creation Mage, my friend,” he said.
From behind me, Enwyn whispered, “If you keep him talking, I might be able to free us from this barrier spell he’s trapped us in.”
I turned my attention back to the shaman. “I knew I shouldn’t have updated my LinkedIn profile straight away,” I said.
The shaman frowned and then shook his head. “I know who you are, Justin Mauler.”
“Good for you, man. I’m happy to say that I’m entirely ignorant as to who the fuck you are.”
“That’s not important.”
“I’ll say.”
The shaman cocked his head to one side and scrutinized me, as he might examine a bug under a microscope.
“You're the progeny of the Dark Ones. I can smell your parents’ power on you,” the wizened troll said.
I was baffled and surprised at the turn this conversation had suddenly taken, but I wasn’t about to show it to this rambling jackass. My parents’ power? What the fuck was he on about?
“That might just be Dr. Geronimo’s body wash,” I said. “Sometimes people get it confused for the smell of raw power…”
The shaman growled in his throat. Clearly, my inane banter was getting to him. “You don’t know yet, do you?” he said. “You’re unaware of just how many might willingly bend the knee to you—as they bent the knee to the Dark Ones. However, I have another purpose for you.”
I sighed, and behind me Enwyn whispered in a strained voice, “Almost there…”
My head was full of questions, but this was not the time nor the place to ask them, not with the three women in tow. So I said, “I kind of hoped that you didn’t just get us altogether like this just to bore the living shit out of me. What do you want, douchebag?”
