Creation Mage 3 (War Mage Academy)

by Dante King

“Trying to sneak off to a clandestine meeting on a school day, darling!” Cecilia chided me mockingly. “Someone is in need of a smacked ass.”

  I was totally flummoxed and it must have showed on my face because Alura patted me sympathetically on the arm and said, “There, there, don’t be so surprised. We received a message from Nigel and the rest of the boys last night, telling us what you were planning on doing today.”

  “You did, huh?” I asked, with a little laugh. “And what, they warned you that I might never return? Those big old softies, eh?”

  “Something like that,” Alura said, in her calm and reasonable voice.

  “They said that they wouldn’t have a hope of persuading you to take one of them along as backup, darling,” Cecilia said, steering me down the steps and beginning to lead me down the path. “But they did say that you’d never be able to turn down a pretty face. So, we brought all three of our pretty faces around to tell you that we’ll be your bodyguards.”

  From behind me, Janet put both her hands on my shoulders and whispered not-so-quietly into my ear, “We’ll guard the shit out of your body!”

  The other girls laughed.

  “Don’t be vexed at the boys,” Alura said. “They were just worried about you and knew that you couldn’t say no to us.”

  I shook my head, fished about for words, then gave up and waved my hand dismissively. “I’m not mad at them. They were right, after all. Let’s go.”

  Our quartet made its way down the hill and into the thicker mist that had enshrouded Nevermoor like a—well, like a shroud. It took us the better part of half an hour to make our way around the village to the eastern edge. After we came to the signpost that marked the town boundary, we headed into the misty countryside, crossing one of the rivers that wended its way through Nevermoor and up into the hills.

  “I’ve never been this way before,” Janet said as we walked along.

  “Me neither,” I admitted, “but I can remember the rough lay of the land from when we were flying the other day.”

  I turned up a dirt track that I remembered from our aerial excursion the other day, and the girls followed.

  “Good job that I wore flats today,” Cecilia said, stepping gingerly around a puddle. “Heels would have been very hard work.”

  I smiled out at the dense haze. That was one of the things I liked most about Cecilia. She presented such an interesting dichotomy: a beautiful elvish girly girl who never looked more at home than when she was strutting about in a floaty dress, but she was also a ruthless and bloodthirsty warrior. It was the personality equivalent of chicken nuggets dipped in Nutella: both were great on their own, but neither should be mixed together—until the day that you do combine them and realize, to your amazement, that together they make the one of the tastiest snacks in the world.

  Before long, the dark green coniferous edge of a forest loomed up out of the milky fog. It looked as haunted and forbidden a place as you’d expect. We were standing at the feet of trees that looked like they could suddenly spring to life and grab you in their knobbly, knotted, and gnarled fists. Standing in a world where that really could happen was quite a trip for me. I grinned, remembering the stories that my uncle would read to me when I was a little kid. Stories about ogres and wolves and boogeymen and woods exactly like the one I was looking at now. I had loved those stories and would have given anything to visit the places he used to talk about when I was a kid.

  And now, here I am, I thought.

  The fog swirled, revealing a path leading along the edge of the forest.

  “I deduce that we’re heading that way?” Alura asked.

  “I guess so,” I said, “but before we do, let me just tell you what we’re actually doing here.”

  I then filled them in, with a few more details, about the scheduled meeting between me, Arun, and his Death Mage cousin.

  “So, yeah,” I said after I had summed it up. “I’m doing this because it seems like the easiest way for me and the boys to get our hands on a poltergeist. If anyone knows how to procure one, it has to be a Death Mage, right?”

  “And Arun thinks that this cousin of his can get you one?” Janet asked dubiously.

  I nodded. Hell, I didn’t wonder that she looked unsure about the scheme.

  “Stranger things have happened,” Janet said, shrugging. I noted that she didn’t exactly stipulate what those things might be. Pigs flying? That might be a seasonal thing in Avalonia for all I knew.

  When we found the entrance to the crypt—a long stone building comprised of ancient-looking stone blocks that were covered in lichen—Arun Lightson was already waiting for us outside. His bright orange hair, ending in that sharp widow’s peak, was bedewed with moisture, his arms were crossed over his chest. He was peering circumspectly out into the mist. When he saw my entourage, he did not look impressed.

  “Why the devil did you bring this lot with you, Mauler?” he snapped as we approached.

  “I was worried about this meeting being too much of a sausagefest,” I replied, my face deadpan.

  Arun looked like he was going to give his opinion on me bringing a bunch of ladies to a meeting as sensitive as this one, but then thought better of it. He growled something inaudible then motioned for us to come closer.

  “Now,” he muttered, his thin lips barely moving and his eyes flicking from one of our faces to the next, “there are a couple of things that you lot you should take into consideration before you meet my dear cousin, Horatio.”

  “Go on,” I said, managing to repress the opinion that Horatio was the sort of swashbuckling name that someone who made a living puncturing whales with harpoons off the coast of nantucket should have, not a Death Mage.

  “Well, he’s an… intriguing character,” Arun said.

  “Intriguing in the same way that the soundless communication between ants in a colony is intriguing?” Alura said.

  “Or intriguing in the way that a four carriage pileup is intriguing?” Janet asked.

  Arun’s jaw clenched. He lowered his voice just that little bit further. Clearly, he did not want his cousin, Horatio, to overhear his words. “Look, just, whatever you do, try not to stare at or mention his overly pale skin. Or the dark rings under his eyes. Or his bald head. Or the sackcloth garments he wears. Or his weight. Or his hunch back. Or his teeth. Especially not his blackened teeth.”

  I cocked my head at Lightson. “Anything else?” I asked sarcastically. “Not his choice in socks? Or which side his nuts have elected to hang on today?”

  Arun considered this. “Better not to mention the hanging thing,” he said after a moment of cogitation. “From what I recall from family outings to the beach, Horatio didn’t have much to speak of when it came to...that.”

  I waved my hands in front of my face, trying to deflect his unnecessary words. Behind me, Cecilia made a noise of distaste.

  “Nude family vacations aside,” I said. “Shall we get on with this?”

  Arun nodded and led us into the crypt. He picked up an oil lamp that he had left in the entrance to the enormous burial chamber and guided us down a long corridor. We turned a corner and found ourselves in a dry and dusty chamber, which was lit by another oil lamp. Sitting on a cracked and broken sarcophagus in the middle of the room, was the bent figure of Horatio.

  He had been fiddling with the bony arm of the occupant of the splintered stone coffin, but his gleaming bald head snapped up as he heard the scuffle of our footsteps.

  My initial thought was that Horatio could benefit from a few good square meals. My next thought was that Horatio looked a lot like Uncle Fester from the Adam’s Family. Admittedly, it was an Uncle Fester as he might have been had he fallen upon hard times and developed a healthy appetite for bath salts, but it was a striking resemblance nonetheless.

  As Arun had warned us, Horatio seemed to have forgone regular attire that morning and instead opted to cut the bottom out of a large coffee sack, along with some arms and a head hole, and wear that.

  I
had been expecting this man to be timid and somewhat twitchy. The sort of guy that would sooner meet the Grim Reaper than meet your eye. However, while he might have been rather twitchy, the Death Mage was anything but shy. As we drew closer to the lighted oil lamp that sat on top of the sarcophagus, Horatio stood and peered keenly at me—and more keenly at the girls behind me.

  “Ah, and you, you’d be Mauler, hm?” he said. His eyes were big and wet in the light of the oil lamps. When he blinked—which wasn’t often—his right eyelid couldn’t quite keep up with the pace that his left set. The result was that he blinked like a frog. I was half expecting his tongue to dart out and lick his eyeballs, though that would only have made them dirtier and given him one hell of a case of pink-eye, if his rotted teeth were anything to go by. It was distracting.

  “Yeah, that’s me,” I said. “And you must be Horatio. I’d shake your hand, but I’m worried it might fall off.”

  Horatio was humming to himself and looking over my shoulder at Alura, Cecilia, and Janet. Prudently, the ladies had decided to hang back.

  “What-what-what was that?” he asked, those eyes of his snapping back to me like a pair of ball bearings.

  “Nothing,” I said. I didn’t fancy getting bitten by this guy, and he was most definitely giving off a rabid dog vibe. “Let’s just cut to the chase, shall we? Arun here says that you might know a way to procure a poltergeist for me?”

  “Hmmmmmm?” Horatio said. “Oh, yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah, yeah I could definitely probably help you with that. Oh yeah, man, certainly.”

  What the fuck is this dude on? I wondered. Is Arun sure that he’s actually part of his family.

  “Well, the whole ‘definitely probably’ talk isn’t what I’d call confidence boosting,” I said. “Have you got any notion as to how the hell you’d do it?”

  Horatio was staring over my shoulder again. His goggling eyes twitched as he looked intently at one of the girls. “You.... You look familiar somehow,” he croaked, his fingers waving in front of him as if he was trying to pick a name from the air.

  “I can say with definite confidence,” Janet replied from behind me, “that we have never met before, buddy.”

  “Hm. Hmmmmm,” Horatio said. He plucked thoughtfully at the ragged neck of his sack robe thing. Then he looked sharply at me, as if he had not interrupted our conversation.

  “We would hit the Eldritch Prison, of course,” he said, blinking frog-like once more. He pointed a finger at me that looked like a gnawed chicken drumstick. “You, Mauler, you must help me. Help the group I am a part of.”

  I looked at him. One of those looks that said, ‘You’re a fucking Loony Tune, man, but I shall hear you out, just in case you manage to say something that can persuade me otherwise.’

  I glanced at Janet, and she gave me a little shrug.

  “Okay,” I said to Horatio. “Maybe. But, at the moment, you’re striking me as a guy who has diarrhea of the mouth and constipation of the brain. How the fuck do you expect to be able to gain entrance to a joint as secure as the Eldritch Prison?”

  Horatio made a noise that sounded like he was gargling balls, then I realized that he was laughing. “We, ah, have something, a little something. Something key. A key, in fact! One that can help us open almost any lock there is!”

  Well, I had an idea what kind of key this asshole and his friends currently had in their possession.

  Chapter Eighteen

  My eyes narrowed. My knuckles popped as my fists curled into balls. “A Skeleton Key, is that it? A motherfucking Skeleton Key. I wonder where you got that from?”

  “Yes, that’s the key! The Skeleton Key! Absolutely key!” Horatio said.”Wait, how did you know? It’s supposed to be a secret.”

  “It’s hard to keep something a secret from a guy who was there,” I said. “From the very guy that your pal stole it from.” Horatio definitely wasn’t the same guy who had trespassed into my frat house and stolen the key, but it seemed he knew who that asshole was.

  “Ooooh,” said Horatio, smiling a smile that would have served as the best billboard for the benefits of teeth brushing ever, “yes, I see. Yes, it would be hard to keep a secret from such a man as that.”

  I snorted with disdain and impatience. “All right, asshole,” I growled, “hand over the Skeleton Key. Otherwise, I’m going to shove the skeletal arm of whatever poor bastard is in this coffin so far up your mahogany slide that I’ll be able to rip your tonsils out with it.”

  To my annoyance, Horatio wasn’t even looking at me. His eyes were fastened over my shoulder, and his mouth was hanging open. Bizarrely, in a flash of culture that impressed even me, I thought how much he looked like the figure in Edvard Munch’s 1893 painting, The Scream.

  Then, like a scrabbling junkie spider, Horatio crabbed backward until his back was to the wall. He started gibbering, “Yes, yes, fine, well, if you’re not happy about the deal then so be it, so be it! But I cannot give you the key. I do not have it. It is in the possession of my dear leader.”

  Dear leader? Who was this guy? It was clear he wouldn’t take me to whoever had stolen my key, and it wasn’t like I had the time to go on a key-retrieving mission right now anyway. I had other things to worry about, like procuring a poltergeist.

  But what the hell were they planning to do with the key? That seemed like another question for another day.

  “All right, Horatio,” I said forcefully. “Looks like you get to live another day. But I’m going to find that asshole who stole my key. Just not today.”

  It didn’t look like Horatio was paying too much attention to me just then, though. His eyes were still over my shoulder, and he was spitting and spluttering indecipherably.

  I threw up my hand and faced the girls. “All right, I’d say that we’ve gleaned as much from this lovely meeting as we’re going to, ladies.”

  As the four of us walked back up the tunnel, toward the mostly light of day, I heard Arun call, “Let me deal with this, Mauler!”

  “Yeah, I think you’d better, Lightson,” I said. “Although I think the only person who's got any chance of dealing with that motherfucker probably wears a white coat and carries a syringe filled with tranquilizers in his pocket.”

  We started to make our way up the tunnel when, from behind us, I heard the muffled sounds of someone being hit and then some muted cries of pain.

  Then, stuttering and disjointed, Horatio’s voice echoed up the passageway.

  “...the one with the dark hair, the girl with the dark hair! She is the daughter of Idman, no? You are a fool! A fool! And people think that I am mad! You will spoil all our plans to free our brethren from the Eldritch Prison!”

  There was the sound of some more thumps.

  “You guys go on ahead, okay,” I said to the girls. “Please, don’t argue. They’ll hear us coming back if we all go back down. And I want to hear if they say something useful about their plans.”

  Without waiting for any of the girls to answer, I darted quietly back down the passageway. When I reached the end of the tunnel, I glanced slowly around the edge of the wall.

  I saw that Horatio had gotten the better of Arun and had him on the floor. Judging by the blood covering Arun’s mouth and nose, Horatio had clocked him a juicy one.

  As I observed, Horatio pulled out his vector from his robe—predictably, a bone of some sort—and pointed it at Arun. Arun was suddenly stretched out, like he was on a rack, and began to wail pitifully. He looked like he was on the verge of having every joint in his body pop out. It was apparent that Horatio was hitting him with some sort of torturing hex. Horatio released the pressure, and Arun sank to his knees, spitting furious curses.

  It seemed that my coming here with the ladies had gotten Arun into trouble with Horatio. And it also seemed that they were planning on using the Skeleton Key to organize a jailbreak inside Eldritch Prison.

  “I’ve given you just a little, teeny, tiny taste of my displeasure,” Horatio said. “You are lucky we are family, else yo
u would have sampled far worse.”

  “Gods, someone needs to give you an ass-kicking, Horatio,” Arun gasped, fury shading his words. “You’ve needed it for years. I’m on your side, but you can’t bloody well torture your family when you get upset!”

  I knew that I should intervene. I knew that I needed to make sure that Horatio, the tweaked out Death Mage, didn’t accidentally kill Arun. I needed them both.

  Then it hit me. I stuck my crystal staff carefully around the corner, making sure that it was aimed at Arun and let loose my Compulsion (Anger) spell. The spell did just as it was intended and fanned the flames of Arun’s anger until they were forest fire-hot.

  With a cry of rage, Arun launched himself at his cousin and bore him to the ground. Horatio’s vector flew from his hand, and he quailed under the assault of fist and boot that rained down from Arun.

  After my frustrating chat with Horatio, seeing Arun kicking his ass was like a balm to my soul. I let him light the skinny Death Mage’s ass up for a while, before I made a show of sprinting around the corner—as if I had simply heard the commotion—and hauled Arun off Horatio, canceling out my Compulsion spell at the same time.

  “Easy, easy, Arun,” I said as Horatio got shakily to his feet.

  “Horatio, I don’t know what came over me,” Arun said.

  Horatio ground his teeth—a pretty risky move, considering the state of the things—and snatched up his dropped vector. He half looked as if he wanted to blast Arun with a spell there and then.

  “Ah, ah,” I said, raising my own staff. “Let’s call this one a draw, huh?”

  Horatio’s goggling, black-rimmed eyes stared at me and then, in a rustle of hessian, he was gone. Stomping away up the tunnel like a whipped dog.

  “I - uh - thanks, I guess,” Arun said, brushing himself down and looking at his bleeding knuckles.

  “No worries,” I said.

  “Bloody dragon balls, that wasn’t good,” Arun said. “I shouldn’t have done that. Horatio might have a few too many cobwebs in his attic, if you catch my drift, but he’s involved with some dangerous people that you do not want to mess with.”