Creation Mage 6

by Dante King

  “Damn, is that what we are, then?” Leah guffawed.

  I considered all the crazy shit that we had pulled in the last few months. A lot of it—well, most of it—had been pretty damn crazy, and involved fighting and killing and blowing stuff up, sure. But, crucially, all that had gone down because we had been trying to do good things. None of our manic adventures had taken place because me or any of my friends had any nefarious purpose in mind. We had been reactionaries.

  Maybe, we were the angels, if we had been fighting the demons.

  “The Celestial Realm must really have been scraping the bottom of the bargain barrel if that’s the case,” I said.

  The two women laughed.

  “Okay,” I said, making my black crystal staff appear in my hand and patting the pocket in which my mother’s vector, disguised as a white crystal, resided. “Let’s go in and shake the tree and see what falls out.”

  It took our combined efforts to heave the door open. It creaked gratifyingly as it swung open, splitting in half down the middle to reveal the space beyond.

  The space beyond was, I was happy to see, a huge open area lit by the light of the midday sun. It was a courtyard, perhaps as large as a football field, paved in a circular pattern of well-crafted and well-laid slabs of alternating light and dark stone. Its four edges were enclosed, walled in but decorated with leaping columns of masonry.

  It looked like it had once been a gallery of sorts—perhaps it still was. There were statues dotted about the place; some quite fresh looking, others weathered and worn to the point where they seemed like blank stone mannequins. The statues were not all human. They were not all humanoids. Some were more beast than elf or man or nymph.

  The monster sat near the rear of the courtyard; a great, brooding foul thing.

  It was like nothing that I had encountered in my experiences in Avalonia. Like nothing I had ever seen. That wasn’t to say that it was the grossest thing that I had feasted the old eyeballs on. I think that top honor was still held by the Abomination, which was a hideous creature that made you cherish every moment that you weren’t in its company. This thing, though, was definitely new to me.

  The three of us walked further into the courtyard. I was half expecting the door to boom theatrically closed behind us, but it remained open. It was almost tempting us to tuck tail and run.

  There was no chance of that.

  As we approached, our footsteps crunching on bits of loose stone and crumbled plaster from the statues and busts set on plinths all around us, the monster looked up and we were able to get a decent look at it.

  “A liderc!” Mallory breathed from next to me. “I have not heard tell of one for a long time. I can’t even think of when I last heard rumors of such a monster still existing.”

  “Liderc?” I asked. “What the hell is a liderc when it’s at home?”

  “A Nightmare,” Mallory said, an unfamiliar trace of grimness in her tone.

  The monster was crouched like a bad dream at the far end of the courtyard. It was vaguely humanoid in shape: massive, lumpy, and gray as slate. Its back was covered in thick, bristling spines like a porcupine, which stuck through the roughly beaten steel and iron of the back and breastplate that it wore. Its arms were long and ape-like, ending in three-fingered hands tipped with vicious claws. Its legs were thickly muscled and looked like they were built for pouncing.

  It was the thing’s head, though, that really captured the attention. The head was an amalgamation of orangutan and bat. It had large, twitching ears, a squashed nose with enormous nostrils, and bulbous eyes, which could have been scooped straight out of a tarsier’s head and inflated about a thousand times. Teeth like shards of broken black glass filled its mouth.

  I narrowed my eyes at the enormous beast. It must have weighed a few tons and been about twenty-five feet tall. It rocked backward and forward, the tiny pupils of its protuberant eyes fixed on us, gibbering quietly to itself. Drool hung in thick ropes from its slavering, many-toothed jaw. Hideous open nostrils were crusted with yellow goo.

  “Handsome son of a bitch, isn’t it?” I said, wrinkling my nose as the monster’s smell was wafted toward us by a quickening breeze that had slipped over one of the walls.

  Mallory covered her mouth with her hand and said, “Handsome, yes. Could do with a bath though, I think.”

  After my battle with the hydrahound, I was far from at full capacity in the mana department, but I had two extremely capable mages standing to either side of me for which I was pretty damned grateful.

  It was commonly said that Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, but I was hoping that Mallory and Leah would prove that idiom to be incorrect. Hopefully, the combined wrath of two women out to complete a quest would make the passion they showed at being scorned look like a fucking picnic.

  The monster continued to rock and gibber, eyeing us balefully. It looked the part of a monster: mean, scary, grotesque.

  Currently though, it was not acting like one.

  And if a monster didn’t act like a monster, then was it actually a monster?

  I took a few more steps toward it.

  “Do you reckon that, just for once, we might be able to actually reason with this thing?” I asked the two female mages. “Do you think that for once, just this once, we might not have to fucking explode something into a glutinous mess just so—”

  With an elastic, terrifyingly fast spring, the nightmarish liderc leapt upward and landed with a bone rattling thud in the middle of the courtyard. It was no small jump. Must have been thirty yards. I felt the impact of it landing through my boots. It sent shards and chips of stone in all directions, rattling off the walls and pinging off the statues.

  The liderc opened its disgusting, gaping maw and roared out a challenge of unbridled, insane bloodlust.

  “Never mind,” I said, and fired a Blazing Bolt at it.

  The Blazing Bolt flew across the space between us and the monster, crackling red energy trailing behind it like the tail of a comet. The magical projectile hit the liderc square in its armored chest but ricocheted off. The spell made the liderc cut off its roar and grunt, but it deflected off its breastplate and hit a statue, blowing it to smithereens. Stone fell like rain.

  “Plan?” Mallory shot at me as the liderc hissed menacingly.

  “Same as usual!” I yelled sprinting left, while Leah went right. “Stay alive!”

  “Same as usual,” I heard Mallory repeat. She dove and vanished into the scattering of statues.

  The stink of the monster was thick in my nostrils, and I could hear it blithering and snuffling to itself.

  “Yoo-hoo!” I heard Leah caw from off to my right.

  The Chaos Mage cartwheeled out in front of the liderc and hit it with a spray of her sparkling pink acid. Her Chaos spell bubbled and ate up the armor that adorned the beast, pock-marking its bare gray skin where it touched it and sending little tendrils of steam hissing into the air.

  The liderc looked irked, but not much concerned with the attack. It swung a long arm at Leah in retaliation. Leah vaulted nimbly over the scything claws, and they raked the ground where her feet had been, sending sprays of stone chips and dust into the air.

  Mallory appeared from behind the liderc just as I sent a few Frost Shards at it. The monster turned to confront the Holy Mage as the two-foot-long icicles shattered across its armored back harmlessly.

  Mallory floated into the air and opened her hands wide, her eyes glowing with a white fire.

  “Foul creature, be cleansed with Holy Fire!” she said, in a high, cold, terrible voice.

  She thrust her hands forward, and a beam of scintillating gold-white flames erupted from her palms.

  I had to shield my eyes as the Holy Fire chewed up a strip of stone flags, racing toward the liderc. Before the potent spell could hit our adversary, the liderc sprung away nimbly and landed some yards distant, crashing through a minotaur statue.

  Mallory attempted to follow the creature, but the magic she
was wielding seemed cumbersome and awkward. The Holy Fire changed course, leaving patches of melted, bubbling stone in its wake and cutting through a statue like a welding torch through metal. However, before the Holy Mage could target the liderc once more, the fire faltered and faded. She dropped heavily to the floor, landing on her feet but staggering a little.

  That particularly potent spell, which would doubtless have caused the monster some real problems, had also seriously depleted Mallory’s mana reserves. Her pale face was flushed with effort and shining with perspiration.

  I conjured two Crystal Magma Bombs and chucked them toward the liderc before I sprinted over to check on Mallory. The thaumaturgical grenades detonated with twin whumpfs and sprayed viscous magma across the liderc, eating into its armor and burning its gray hide.

  “Are you okay?” I asked Mallory, pulling her out of the line of fire as the liderc ripped up a large statue and tossed it at us.

  “Y-yes,” the Holy Mage stuttered as the hurled statue crashed down not too far away and cracked into five chunks, each the size of a mini-fridge. “I tried t-to end things early and save us all some effort, b-but I missed. Just give me a moment. I’ll be fine.”

  Mallory’s lips were blue, and her teeth chattered, but there wasn’t anything I could do, except keep the liderc’s attention away from her.

  So that is what I did.

  I ran out, sprinted toward the liderc, at the same that Leah appeared and began peppering it with twirling silvery-pink birds that fluttered out of the ether and shot toward the liderc like bullets.

  The liderc narrowed its huge eyes at the storm of silver-pink projectiles and let loose an eerie scream from its slobbering mouth.

  It was a roar that could only just be discerned by the human ear, and it set my teeth on edge. It hit the oncoming Chaos Magic missiles like a wave and flung them right back at Leah, who threw herself to the side. The projectiles ate up the area where she had just been like machine gun fire, blowing chunks out of the stone slabs and scarring the nearby statues. Bright pink sparks erupted.

  The spellfire died just as I reached the spot. I ran through a cloud of dust, pelting toward the liderc.

  The liderc’s eyes scanned the area for Leah. As I approached, the monster heaved itself up onto its stringy, muscular legs so it could peer around all the better.

  It caught sight of me just as I reached it.

  I conjured a smooth, slick magical surface between the liderc’s lanky legs using my Flame Barrier spell and threw myself under its stinking lumpy body.

  Boy, I would have been in the shit if the liderc had possessed the presence of mind to just sit down and crush me. Happily, it did not. I slid through its legs, stabbed upward with my staff as I shot by, and hit the unarmored groin of the liderc with my Leech spell.

  I was spat unceremoniously out the other side of the liderc’s legs, shot off the end of the slide I had created for myself, and tumbled across the tiled floor.

  As the liderc let out a deep, sick-sounding moan and shook its head, I felt a renewed energy course through me. That was the Leech spell at work; it was a degenerative curse that stripped an enemy of their strength and invested it into me, the caster.

  After the taxing time that I’d had against the hydrahound, a fresh shot of mana was just what the doctor ordered.

  I bellowed wordlessly as the fresh power flooded my body, invigorating my limbs and setting new hope burning in my heart.

  “Come on, you bastard!” I yelled and let loose almost every projectile and offensive spell I had on hand and could easily call to my buzzing mind.

  Storm Bolts, Frost Shards, Blazing Bolts, and Paralyzing Zaps pummeled into the liderc. The assortment of Ice, Storm, and Fire Magics flickered and flashed off the monster’s armor. Most of the spells deflected, crashing into the stone floor and spraying up geysers of earth and stone like IEDs going off.

  The liderc, despite its sheer size and bulk, was buffeted backward by the force of my spells. It growled and slathered its fury as it was forced to take steps backward, as my magic compelled it to retreat.

  My pummeling continued for over ten seconds as I sought to find a chink in its armor, but to no avail. I could feel my mana reserves waning once more, and I was starting to experience that familiar sensation of maybe having bitten off more than I could chew.

  Then I saw a flash of movement from my right.

  Through the haze of stone dust and the thaumaturgical smoke that my reflecting spells were giving off, Leah shot toward the liderc. She was moving far too fast for her to be simply running. She was weaving in and out of statues with unnatural smoothness, like someone on a…

  “Hoverboard,” I said, in dumbfounded amazement.

  Leah was standing, perfectly balanced, on a hot pink and white board composed of crackling pearlescent pink Chaos Magic. The skimboard-shaped device zipped along about a foot off the ground.

  “Build me a ramp will you, honeypie?” Leah cried as she boosted toward the liderc.

  Pausing in my magical broadside, I constructed a gelatinous-looking orange ramp with my Flame Barrier spell and set it directly in Leah’s path.

  The brief cessation I had to take in my barrage while I constructed this magical ramp allowed the beast to turn and set its sights on Leah.

  Leah hit the ramp, a smile on her face and a cry of delight on her lips. She catapulted into the air, kicking herself free of the Chaos board and shifting into an elegant floating backflip.

  The board, made from Chaos Magic, ignited due to its proximity to the Flame Barrier spell. It shot at the liderc like a cheerful, pink missile and slammed into its breastplate in an intense explosion of sparks and fire.

  The liderc screeched angrily at the impact, rocking back on its muscly legs. Its thick armor clanged to the floor, the bonds that held it severed by the intensity of Leah’s spell.

  It was a freaking fantastic move by Leah, a wonderful bit of War Mage work. However, regardless of how pretty the magic was and how cool she had looked zooming in on a goddamn magical hoverboard, it didn’t change the fact that the liderc snatched her out of the air mid-backflip.

  The nightmarish creature looked pissed that the pink-haired woman had just broken its only suit of clothing. It held her up and sniffed as Leah’s hair tickled its hideous open nostrils. A rancid deep purple tongue snaked out from between the glistening black teeth and licked at the pink hair.

  “No!” Leah screamed. “I just fucking conditioned last night, you motherfucker!”

  There was no time for asking questions and second-guessing answers.

  With a mighty mental heave, I ripped a statue, which looked a lot like The Rock, from a nearby plinth with my Telekinesis spell. With a monumental effort, I heaved it over the back of the liderc’s head.

  The liderc opened its cavernous mouth. If it dropped Leah, it would be like she’d been deposited into a mincing machine. The creature’s mouth was so full of razor-sharp higgledy-piggledy teeth that it wouldn’t even have to bite down to kill her.

  I let the statue fall and, as I did, I used my Crystalize spell to encase it in a translucent crystal and increase its weight by half.

  The statue plummeted down and struck the liderc on the back of its skull with a sickening cracking sound. The creature’s bulbous eyes went fixed. Its hand opened, and Leah fell to the deck, landing like a cat on all fours and rolling out of any potential retaliatory stomp.

  “That’s going to leave a bump in the morning,” I said grimly, watching as the liderc tottered and turned a full three-sixty on the spot.

  It probably would have done too, if it had not been for the sudden eruption of Holy Fire that engulfed the monster’s head.

  Mallory Entwistle, white gown billowing around her in the backdraft pushed out by the Holy Fire she was channeling, stalked determinedly down the gallery of statues. Her arms were outstretched, and her wings were unfolded. She looked very much the avenging archangel. A thin beam of celestial fire, thirty-five yards long, conne
cted her open palms to the head of the liderc.

  “Go back to the shadow!” she cried in a fell voice.

  I don’t mind saying that I almost popped a nerd chub then and there. To have this beautiful, powerful mage quote Tolkien without even knowing it, just as she was about to—

  The liderc’s head glowed incandescent white and exploded.

  It ruptured, like some gray boil, spraying dark blood and smoking bits of skull in all directions. Chunks of evil-smelling eggplant-colored gunk splatted down around us—liderc brain.

  With a final spasm, the headless monster stood bolt upright, as tall as it could, and then flopped over backward, smashing through one last statue as it came to rest.

  As soon as I was sure the decapitated thing was staying down—never a given in Avalonia—I ran past the fallen liderc and straight to Mallory’s side.

  The woman, who had looked so heavenly and queenly as she strode toward the liderc with her hands full of fire, spouting out Gandalf’s best one-liners, looked run-in now. She was exhausted, sitting on the remains of a shattered plinth, though she still held her chin up as Leah and I approached.

  “You’ll get piles, sitting on stone like that,” I said,

  The Holy Mage laughed tiredly.

  “You killed it, sugar-butt!” Leah said, putting a hand on Mallory’s shoulder.

  “We killed it,” Mallory corrected.

  “It was a solid team effort,” I said.

  Leah gazed over at the huge corpse of liderc and then around at the stricken courtyard.

  “You’re thinking that we’ve slain ourselves a monster,” I said, “so—”

  “Where’s the demon?” Mallory finished my sentence.

  “Exactamundo,” Leah said. Her breath plumed in the air.

  I frowned. “That wasn’t the demon?”

  “It was the monster,” Leah replied.

  It had been a warm winter’s day up until then. Our breath had only smoked first thing in the morning, by the time we had entered the Shite Pipe, the day had warmed sufficiently not to see it anymore.

  Slowly, with a growing sense of dread that was an external force more than it was an intuitive leap of logic, I turned to look at the corpse of the liderc.