Creation Mage 6

by Dante King

  “And this blasting powder just kills them, does it?” I asked.

  “No, no, no, no, mate,” Reginald said, slowing down when he overheard the conversation Leah, Mort, and I were having. “Yuletide is not the time to go around killing things now, is it?”

  “There’s the whole rest of the year for that,” Mort said soberly.

  “Quite,” agreed Reginald. “No, the powder, along with the subtle spell that imbues the inside of each barrel, if it hits, simply sterilizes the Eggnog Gnome.”

  “You blow its bits off?” I asked, shocked.

  “Good grief, Mr. Mauler, I admit that I have made more than one morally skewed decision in my life,” the Headmaster said, “but as far as shooting the bollocks off random woodland creatures goes. That, sir, is where I draw the line!”

  “The gnome is unconscious for a short time,” Mort explained in his calm, slightly eerie voice. “While they are insensate, the powder and spell render them unable to produce more young. They can still…” the pale bounty hunter turned a slight shade of pink and tailed off.

  “They can still make twenty toes, is what my bashful cousin means,” Leah said, magicking a black cigarette out of thin air, sticking it between her teeth, and lighting it with a prod of her pinky. “The thundercusses don’t stop that. The Chaosbanes might be maniacs, but we’re not monsters.”

  We continued onward, into the heart of a thick belt of woodland behind the house. The sun was still only a finger’s breadth over the eastern horizon when I lost sight of it. We found ourselves encircled by evergreen trees that looked like they had been young when the dinosaurs had been roaming the land—if there had ever been such things as dinosaurs on a world which still hosted dragons.

  The smell of pinewoods relaxed my mind. They smelled of life, although life that was dormant and sleepy and brooding. The pine needles above, which made up the roof of this many pillared arboreal hall, kept out the worst of the snow and all but the most insidious breezes. The pine needles underfoot deadened all sound and muted our footfalls.

  I fell in next to Enwyn as Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock led the way through the trees. Evidently, the old-timer had a specific spot in mind because he pushed along without hesitation even though I could not discern any visible path. The trees were healthy and full of needles and pine cones, but they were old and widely spaced too. The first of their boughs started some three yards above the lanky Mort’s head.

  “We’re getting close to their first nesting site,” Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock told us. “Everyone, ready your thundercusses.”

  I took a handful of purple powder from the small sack at my waist and dropped it down the wide mouth of the thundercuss’s barrel. It seemed strange that this was all there was to it, but scanning around at the others in the group, I saw they were all doing the same.

  “Have you ever hunted Eggnog Gnomes before, Justin?” Enwyn asked me. She had not been with me when I had been chatting to Leah, Mort, and Reginald, instead walking along with Aunt Ruth, Igor, and Idman.

  “Oh, sure,” I said drily. “The whole time that we’ve known each other, I’ve been getting dressed up as a traffic cone and sneaking off to go on these little Eggnog Gnome hunting trips. No, I don’t even know what the fuck an Eggnog Gnome is. At least, I didn’t know until I was given the rundown just now.”

  Enwyn grinned. “The Chaosbanes keep you on your toes, don’t they?”

  “That,” I said, “is putting it mildly.”

  We continued onward until we were pulled up by Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock. The old man motioned everyone to remain quiet, and then unslung a small and battered horn from his shoulder. He put it to his lips and blew a blast on it that sounded like a decrepit foghorn. It echoed through the trees, bouncing off the boles like a lemur leaping from trunk to trunk.

  As the last of the echoes died away, there was an abrupt rustling sound from all around us. The tree branches up in the heights began to shake and quiver. Pine needles started falling like vegetative rain.

  Then, the Eggnog Gnomes emerged.

  The little creatures were the size of the garden gnomes we had back on Earth, but that was where the similarities ended. They were wild, gnarled things, humanoid, and dressed in simple fur loincloths. Their bodies were covered in a downy fuzz. Their hands had only two long, clawed fingers that looked ideal for grasping onto tree boles and branches.

  As Mort had described, they had stretches of membrane or skin running from their elbows to their ankles, much as flying foxes did. They zipped from tree to tree, dodging nimbly amongst the branches and trunks, as fleet in the air as swallows. As they swooped, they made a grating chattering sound, which I took to be their language.

  “Ho, gnomes!” Aunt Ruth cried at the top of her lungs.

  It became immediately apparent how the thundercusses had come by their names. They went off with detonations that would have done a mortar tube credit. The recoil from my weapon was equivalent to being kicked in the shoulder by a mule with a bug up its ass.

  Eggnog Gnomes were blown from the air as they zipped backward and forward above us, tumbling down to land with soft thumps on the pine needles coating the forest floor like an organic crashmat.

  Even in the face of that initial thunderous barrage, the gnomes continued zooming this way and that. Clearly, they couldn’t make us out, dressed as we were in our gaudy orange shooting apparel.

  I missed my first gnome, my shot going slightly high and blasting a tree branch to smithereens in a cloud of purple dust.

  I reloaded quickly and automatically, my hand reaching for the pouch at my waist. Once I was reloaded, I tracked a particularly plump flying Eggnog Gnome as he dive-bombed from on high, heading for a large branch off to my right. I tracked the fat flyer, took a breath, and squeezed the trigger.

  The shot hit the Eggnog Gnome square in the guts and blasted him from the air. He landed almost directly at my feet. Looking down, I thought I couldn’t have picked a better specimen to scoop from the gene pool. He was the sort of ugly that would have frightened a vulture off a gut pile.

  We continued plugging away at the gnomes for a good five minutes before the dumb little brutes packed it in and disappeared to whatever homes they made up in the treetops.

  To nobody’s surprise, when the unconscious, snoring Eggnog Gnomes were counted, Mort was leading the scoreboard.

  Seeing that there was no real way to distinguish who had shot what, I figured there would be a fair amount of cheating. However, it soon became obvious that the Eggnog Gnome Hunt was about as sacred a tradition as there could be and none of the Chaosbanes would even think about sneaking an extra gnome to their total or claiming one that had been popped out of the air by someone else.

  The morning passed quickly in this fashion. It was, unsurprisingly, quite a nice, guilt-free way to hunt. Not only were we partaking in an activity that was just plain fun, but we were almost doing the local environment a favor: bringing down numbers of pests without actually killing anything. That sort of thing would have earned you a freakin’ Nobel Prize back on Earth.

  We stopped for a simple hunters’ repast of cheese, bread, meat, and pickles in the mid-morning. While we all perched on logs and the Chaosbanes regaled one another with past Eggnog Gnome hunting exploits, Aunt Ruth came over to sit with me. It was quite a feat to look attractive dressed in the absurd hunting gear, but somehow the older woman did not look half as stupid as I felt.

  “Are you enjoying yourself so far, Mr. Mauler?” she asked, handing me one of the bottles of port, which Igor had seen as his duty to bring along.

  “I am, Aunt Ruth,” I said. “I mean it sounds fun on paper, but in practice, it’s one hell of a way to shake off the last cobwebs of a hangover.”

  Aunt Ruth laughed. “I’m glad that we’re able to entertain you.”

  “Yeah, there’s an element of entertainment, I guess,” I said, “but I’ll admit, I’m out to be the one that gets to carve that Yuletide Log.”

  Aunt Ruth lean
ed forward. “Do you have a competitive nature?”

  “I guess that all War Mages probably do, don’t they?”

  “A fair point,” the older woman said, pushing a stray curl out of her face with one finger and tucking it behind her ear. “You strike me as a distinctly hot-blooded man, though.”

  I shrugged and smiled. Took another bite from the chunk of delicious wholemeal bread I was holding and a swig from the port bottle. I handed the tasty, sweet wine back to Aunt Ruth.

  “I have been known to get a bit carried away in the heat of combat,” I said to her after I had swallowed.

  The older woman leaned further in. She placed a hand on my thigh, perhaps a little higher up my leg than might be considered acceptable in polite company.

  “Just in the heat of combat?” she asked in a slightly husky voice.

  I looked up, a little startled. “There are other times too,” I said, careful to keep my tone neutral. I cast an eye at Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock, who was sitting on a tree stump ten yards away and discussing something with Mort, Idman, and Barry.

  “I bet there are,” Aunt Ruth said, a smirk playing across her lips. “I know exactly what you’re talking about, young man.”

  She got to her feet and took a deep breath. Even through the shapelessness of the orange robe, I could detect the outlines of those great, full breasts of hers.

  “Perhaps,” she said, “one day soon, we might get a chance to sit quietly together and compare notes.”

  I didn’t have the chance to say anything smart. By the time I realized I’d just been propositioned, the sexy older aunt had sashayed away.

  I puffed out my cheeks and got to my feet as Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock called the party to order once more.

  What a holiday this was turning out to be.

  Our next port of call on our hunting trip was a glade which was open to the sky. Within this wide, open scar in the forest were a smattering of mighty oaks.

  “Right,” Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock instructed us, “this, as my kin well know, is somewhat of a hotspot for those pestilential gnomes. All of you spread out around this clearing. When you’re all set, I’ll let sound the horn and you can get to blasting!”

  Full of vim and port, those of us who were shooting—everyone bar Barry and Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock—spread ourselves around the area as directed.

  Our venerable, white-haired host, whose on-again-off-again geniality kept everybody on high alert, blew on the Hoodwinking Horn.

  The Eggnog Gnomes descended in a swarming flurry the likes of which we had not yet seen. The grapefruit-sized humanoids zipped to and fro, nattering excitedly to one another in their awful language. Thundercuss shots ripped through the still forest air once more, sending birds cawing indignantly skyward. Gnomes fell, limp and out cold, to the deck. We all had our eyes in now. Had all become quick and adept at reloading the thundercusses from our powder sacks.

  I spun in a crouch, drawing a bead on an athletic gnome that shot through the glade like a miniature F-15 Eagle. I pulled the trigger a millisecond ahead of the flying figure so that my shot caught it square on and the gnome tumbled from the air. I was reloading fresh powder into my weapon before the downed Eggnog Gnome had even hit the ground, then it was up on my shoulder once more as I tracked a new target. The next gnome swept in closer to me. When I nailed it, it was propelled through a tangle of branches that cracked and splintered. The gnome came to a halt, dangling upside down and snoring in one of the bare oak trees.

  It was beautiful mayhem. The booming echo of the thundercusses, the purple smoke misting the area, and the whoops and yells of my friends as they blasted away at the plethora of targets. I was having a whale of a time, right up until the point that Igor shot me.

  In the heat of the hunt, I was tracking a speedy little gnome that was more aware than the rest of the scatterbrained creatures. I got the impression that this Eggnog Gnome was taunting me; zooming from tree to tree just fast enough to thwart me from getting a clean shot.

  “I’ve got you now, you little shit,” I muttered to myself, following the gnome around one of the oaks, my thundercuss pressed to my shoulder.

  The Eggnog Gnome paused, peering down at me and jabbering from where it had come to rest on the trunk of a pine. My finger tightened on the trigger.

  Another gnome chose that moment to drop down from a tree on my right. It opened its little wings with a soft snap and whizzed around behind me. Igor bumbled around another oak and caught sight of the diving gnome. He fired from the hip before he realized I was standing in his line of fire.

  His shot of blasting powder hit me dead in the ass and blew me forward off my feet a second after I had squeezed the trigger of my own weapon and plugged the gnome I had been chasing.

  I ended up face down in the dirt and leaves, the seat of my pants feeling like it had just been set on fire. The disbelief that Igor had fucking shot me dissipated in about the same time as the pain took to set in.

  “Son of a bitch!” I hissed through gritted teeth.

  A halt was soon called to the shooting, and the rest of the gang gathered around. By the time a circle had formed around me, I was back on my feet, managing to save a little of my tattered dignity, though my ass was killing me.

  “I’ve always been mercurial on my views of the part the ass plays in times of recreation,” Igor said conversationally. His thundercuss was still smoking in his hand. “I’ve never baulked at introducing a little powder to the rectum, but never in such a forceful and straightforward way, my boy.”

  “You make it sound like I shot myself in the ass,” I said, wincing a little as I flexed a cheek.

  “Well, it takes two to tango,” Igor said.

  “This shit, this powder,” I asked, “it’s not going to make me sterile, is it?”

  “No,” Reginald said. “No, no, mate. I’m quite sure of that. For someone of your size and muscle mass, it would have no effect whatsoever.”

  “I think it’d be best if I took you back to the ranch,” Aunt Ruth said, her forehead wrinkled in a slight frown.

  “Oh, crap on a spatula!” Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock cursed. “We’ve only got one more hunting ground left before we can retire for lunch.”

  “Don’t let me stop you,” I said hurriedly.

  I flexed my right leg and then the left. My ass pulled tenderly. You don’t really give much thought to just how much work your butt does in the walking process until some half-drunken mage shoots you in it.

  “Come on, dear,” Aunt Ruth said, pulling me away from the rest of the group, “let me take you back to the house and sort you out with some medicaments. I’m sure we have an unguent for these powder burns that would be most efficacious…”

  As I allowed Aunt Ruth to lead me back through the trees, following the path we had already cut through the resinous undergrowth, I shot a look back at the group.

  Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock stumped forward and clipped Igor around the back of the head.

  “You can’t just go shooting guests on a gnome hunt, boy!” he snapped. “Who d’you think you are? A damned politician?”

  I caught Enwyn and Leah’s gazes just before they were hidden by the trees. Enwyn’s eyes were shining with professionally suppressed mirth, while Leah’s were full of something else.

  If I had to hazard a guess, I would have said her eyes were full of shrewdness at her Aunt leading me away.

  Aunt Ruth and I got back to the ranch house in fairly good time. My ass was still tender and throbbing, but some of the stinging fire had been taken out of it. I wasn’t sure whether that was from the walk or from the cold air that now permeated the multiple holes in my pants.

  Aunt Ruth led me up to a bathroom on the second or third floor of the ranch. It was hard to keep a track of what floor you were on in the Chaosbane family home. That morning at breakfast for instance, I had slipped out to use the washroom and, on glancing out of the window, had been surprised to see that I was now at the top of the house wit
hout ever having set foot on a stair. When I had returned to the breakfast room, the view from the large double doors had been straight out onto the back lawn.

  Ruth and I were both still dressed in our orange hunting attire so, when she had shown me the door to the bathroom, Aunt Ruth excused herself, saying that she wished to change into something that made her feel less like a root vegetable and more like a human being.

  I walked into the bathroom and shut the door. Igor’s cloak of many shapes had enabled me to emulate the get-ups of my fellow hunters that morning, so it only took me a moment to switch into something a little less silly. My usual attire felt a lot less baggy and heavy than the hunting garb. Thankfully, the damage the cloak had sustained from Igor’s blunderbuss was completely repaired.

  I pulled my pants down and looked at my ass in the enormous mirror that made up one wall of the bathroom. Under close scrutiny, it did not look so bad. A few superficial cuts and abrasions from the blasting powder, but most of the damage had been done in welt and bruise form.

  “Those gnomes must be tough little bastards,” I mused as I poked at a remarkably sore welt on my left buttcheek.

  The door opened, and I hurriedly pulled my pants back up.

  Aunt Ruth swept in, dressed in a very comfortable looking navy bathrobe.

  “Ah, just missed the show, did I?” she said with a wink.

  She looked a damn sight better out of that pumpkin costume, and doubly good in a robe.

  “Not much to see, I’m afraid,” I said with an easy grin. “Just a lot of bruising. The pants took most of it.”

  “I would have called it a good show, no matter what, dear,” the older woman said.

  I wasn’t quite sure what to say to that.

  Aunt Ruth held up a small glass tube and placed it on the counter. “This is for any grazes, cuts, or bruises,” she said. “I can vouch for it. It sorts out bruises when I’ve been a little… rough with myself.”

  Those last three words were as loaded with innuendo as any three words uttered by a woman.

  “Well,” I said, still quite unsure how to play this quickly escalating scenario, “if it has your personal seal of approval, that’s good enough for me.”