Metal Mage 7

by Eric Vall

  “She told us to stay here, and that you would be okay,” Aurora continued. “So, we did, but then the chamber flooded, and Shoshanne kept us all breathing while we just sort of … waited.”

  “I thought you would need my help,” Shoshanne told Deya, “but your lungs were breathing on their own. It must be the blending of your senses with the dragon.”

  I raised my brows. “Well, that’s fucking awesome.”

  Deya nodded. “It was incredible to experience,” she said with a sparkling smile. “They felt so familiar to me, and I think they knew I was among them. They swam around me and sang, and the little ones played with my tail for a while before I heard you.”

  “You could hear us?” Aurora asked.

  “I could hear everything,” Deya mused. “For miles and miles, I could hear anything in the water and above it. I even heard the storm brewing, and as I travelled closer to it, I could hear you all speaking with the mage, and I waited outside the cove to be sure you would all be okay.”

  “I thought you were going to eat us,” Shoshanne admitted.

  I furrowed my brow. “When?”

  “When that hideous woman tried to drown you,” Deya said, and I felt the air shift a bit as her anger returned. “I was so angry when I found you two like that, I decided I would eat her and teach her a lesson, so after I swam by and threw the two of you out of the water, I waited for the proper moment. I was worried if I missed my chance, you would fall into the water, and she would only torture you more.”

  I grinned. “That’s exactly what I was up to on the boulder. I was waiting for my opening, but then that damn dagger came flying.”

  “What dagger?” Shoshanne and Aurora asked immediately, and the healer came over to check me for any injuries with her brows crinkled.

  “Coin,” I reminded her with a smirk, and I pulled the runed piece of silver out to pass it back to Dragir. “Thanks, by the way. That saved my ass.”

  Dragir shrugged and turned back to Deya.

  “I do not understand how you managed to engrave this rune,” he insisted. “You know nothing of these elements and by all reason--”

  “Wait a second,” I cut in. “You said you sat down and started engraving what came to you while you sensed the presence of Nemris, right?”

  Deya nodded. “Yes, that is all I did. I know it makes little sense, but this is the best I can describe it.”

  “The same thing happened to me.” I nodded. “That’s how I made Stan. I had a dream about Nemris, and when I woke up, I had this overwhelming urge to create something, and I just sort of let my mind take over. I engraved the rune I’d seen in my dream, and like you said, it was a lot like being in a trance or something.”

  “This goes against everything I know of rune magic,” Dragir muttered as he considered his sister. “What did you hear? What did Nemris say about the rune? Did she show you the rune in your mind and you copied it, or did it come to you while you worked? Was it from your dream the other night? Were your eyes open or closed when you did this? Could you sense the elements around you? Could you name them? Please tell me you could name them.”

  We all chuckled at the man’s determination, and Deya sent her brother a sweet smile.

  “Perhaps we should sit down and go over this later,” she giggled.

  Dragir sighed in exasperation, and he settled for brooding over all of this to himself while he stared at the dragon scale on the floor for several minutes.

  “The dagger,” Aurora led anxiously.

  “Right.” I nodded. “Some of those runes on Yvette obviously weren’t real, since she just carved them in for fun.”

  Shoshanne cringed, and I returned the sentiment.

  “But some of them were real brandings the Master must be practicing with,” I continued. “Which could be a major problem. When I threw my dagger at Yvette, she fucking pulled it to her palm and sent it right back.”

  Aurora’s eyes went wide.

  “Only you can do that,” she muttered.

  I nodded. “And the Master’s clearly working to counter it,” I told her. “I dodged the throw, though, but then the jetty exploded, she was on me, and shit got intense. Either way, she must have summoned it to her again is all I can figure, because she was laughing her ass off right before it came flying out of nowhere.”

  “Crazy bitch,” Aurora growled.

  I grinned and dropped my arm around the woman to lay a kiss in her blue hair.

  “Don’t worry,” I chuckled. “Deya ate her.”

  None of us could help laughing at the ridiculousness of the statement, and Deya blushed as she rolled her eyes.

  “Don’t tell my father I did that,” she begged.

  Dragir abruptly looked up from his brooding. “I will not tell our father as long as you explain everything about this rune to me right this instant.”

  I shook my head and clapped the elf on the shoulder. “Don’t you have an army you should be checking on?” I reminded him.

  “They will heal,” Dragir said with a shrug, but when I gave him a pointed look, he finally groaned and agreed. “I will go to House Fehryn only briefly to be sure all is well, but as soon as I return--”

  “I will tell you about this rune,” Deya sighed.

  Dragir gave a curt nod, and I helped Deya up from the floor of the chamber.

  “I’m gonna work on fixing that cove,” I told Dragir. “It’s looking a little rough.”

  Deya and her brother halted.

  “How bad is it?” Deya asked uneasily.

  The vaulted chamber only had an inch of water in it now, and I was relieved to know the beautiful place wouldn’t be flooding like this anymore. With Yvette gone, the fortress of Nemris’ family would be left in peace again, and I admired every inch of it on our way back out to the cove.

  Dragir and Deya were too shocked to speak when they looked out on the rubble and debris that made up the once beautiful inlet of their ancestors, and I was honestly pretty upset myself.

  From the moment I laid eyes on the cove and the hidden fortress, the place had felt like a second home, and I assured the two elves I would have it back exactly the way it was by the time Dragir returned.

  He seemed skeptical about this and avoided looking at the cove any longer than necessary, and then he made his way to the cliff without a word.

  I let him take the Mustang to cheer him up a bit, and as soon as I reformed the path along the cliff that had disintegrated, Cayla joined us at last and hopped into my arms.

  She was limp by the time I finished kissing her, and she let out a sigh as she curled against my chest.

  “I feel like this has been the longest day in a while,” she mumbled.

  “No shit,” I chuckled. “It’s hard to believe we were looking at a Wendigo army after breakfast this morning.”

  “That was this morning?” Aurora asked incredulously.

  “Let’s never do that again,” Deya added. “We will start our days with sex and dragons from now on. No Wendigo.”

  “Yes,” Aurora immediately chimed in. “Can you teach me to be a dragon? You can be first with Mason for the next month if you say yes.”

  I shook my head and headed into the cove while Aurora took to outright begging the elf, and Cayla soberly countered the half-elf’s right to hand over exclusive firsts with me in bed to anyone.

  The sun began to dip down over the jungle at our backs, and the storm was gradually dissipating while the clouds became softer and dotted the sky with soft orange tufts.

  I stood in the destroyed cove and admired the serenity finally returning to the coast, and as I stretched my limbs and prepared to get to work, I realized I was completely uninjured for the first time in a long time. More than anything, I wanted a coin of my own like the one Deya’s mother had created for them, but I knew this was impossible. Still, all of my injuries from the battle at House Fehryn had begun to heal the moment Dragir dropped the coin into my pocket, and the sensation of my shattered bones healing themselves
during Yvette’s attack was something I couldn’t seem to stop going over in my mind.

  To be able to heal this way permanently would be a complete game changer where the Master was concerned. Given that he was likely an elf with the natural ability to heal quickly, being close to possessing the same ability would be ideal when the time came to face him. Even against Yvette, I wasn’t sure I would have made it out if not for the healing powers of the runed coin, and she was only his test subject.

  I wondered what it would take to convince Dragir to figure out a rune to help me out in this department, but I honestly doubted there was anything I could possibly come up with. He was so wholly against the idea of branding anything these days, and after the grotesque process of removing Rali’s branding, I could sort of see where he was coming from.

  The fact that a rune could act independently when attacked was more than unnerving. I was so used to magery and the embodiment of an element, but I wasn’t sure rune magic could work in as subtle a way. Deya was extremely familiar with her runes, and the way she discussed them reminded me a lot of magery. She had said their presence was comforting to her, but there had to be at least a thousand middle grounds between her runes and a rune like Dragir’s.

  Imagining what it was like for Yvette to live with so many runes all over her was enough to make me question the idea completely. The last thing I wanted was to be as disconnected and unstable as her, or as violently minded as Dragir’s rune had forced him to become.

  I continued to circle between the pros and cons of branding and the possibilities while I took stock of the damage in the cove, and I discussed a few options with Cayla as Aurora began burning the large trunks and branches away for me.

  “I feel strangely connected to the bazooka now,” the princess mused. “As if it knows me or likes me to use it. Is this because of the runes?”

  “I noticed that too,” I agreed. “I think it’s the rune Dragir engraved to make their operation exclusive to us. Something about firing the bazooka changed after he added that. I could feel the power of the weapon in my own veins.”

  Cayla’s lips curled in pleasure. “I like it,” she informed me. “We should do this with your other weapons. Do you think you would be able to?”

  I shrugged. “I’ve got a lot to learn still,” I told her, “but if I could figure out a way to engrave my own runes, and actually knew what the hell I was doing, there’s no end to what I could create. Ammunition wouldn’t be an issue ever again, and creating more advanced weaponry would be simplified a hundred times over.”

  Cayla’s icy blue eyes gleamed at the thought. “Could you create something that fires faster?” she asked, and I didn’t miss the longing in her tone. “I want to be able to pull a trigger and have several bullets fire one after the other. Very fast. Is that possible?”

  “That’s called an automatic weapon,” I chuckled, “but if I made something like that, I would definitely need to be able to use Dragir’s rune. That shit is no joke.”

  “It would make the Master’s armies easier to obliterate,” she mused. “With a line of bazookas, and then these automatic weapons … perhaps you could mount them on some sort of stand to make the aiming of the weapons easier … revolvers for more close hand attacks, of course.”

  I raised my brows at the calculating woman’s ideas, and she blushed lightly when she caught my gaze.

  “It’s only something I was thinking of up on the cliff,” she mumbled. “Easier loading with a faster delivery.”

  “I like where your head’s at,” I assured the deadly woman with a grin.

  With all of the trees burned away, Shoshanne used her Aer magic to clear out the rest of the debris, and when only rubble remained, I raised my palms and began reconstructing the cove.

  I separated the shards of slate rock out first, and I closed my eyes as I searched my mind for the image of the cove as it had been. Then I laid the shards out and carefully fused everything together while I focused on the particular angle of the slope that had led from the cave to the shore.

  Repacking the cliff was needed as well, but the mud cooperated well enough for me to get everything in place, and then I seeped into the soil to solidify the makeup a bit more. Once everything looked exactly as it had, I walked circles around the slate and began carving out divets so the little green guys could have their tidal pools back.

  Deya was smiling from ear to ear as she watched, and the women gathered near the mouth of the cave to enjoy some fish Aurora prepared over a fire with exotic fruits from the jungle.

  I joined them once the final boulder was in place on the jetty, and as I laid out with my head resting on Shoshanne’s plush thighs, the sky started to dim toward a soft purple.

  The sea dragons were just beginning to make their way to shore when Deya looked over with a worried expression.

  “What did Dragir mean about you being abducted?” she asked uneasily.

  I sighed and considered the iridescent crests rising and falling near the horizon.

  “I thought the Flumen Mage had been sent to kill me like all the rest of the Master’s minions,” I told her, “but it seems I’ve caught his attention in a not very ideal way. He’s got it in his mind that he wants to get me on his side now. Apparently, I’m too valuable to kill.”

  Deya stared. “The Master’s going to steal you away like Rali?” she asked quietly.

  “He’ll try,” I allowed. “He probably wants to get that fucking rune on me so I can make weapons for him.”

  “Mason … ” Deya muttered, but I sent her a reassuring grin.

  “If the guy can’t even manage to kill me, there’s no way he’s gonna be able to snatch me, either.”

  Cayla smirked and helped to ease Deya’s concerns a bit, and then the princess curled up with her head against my chest.

  I let the subject drop so the women wouldn’t worry, but after facing off with Yvette, I’d realized this change in the Master’s plans was a pretty bad development. It meant I needed to watch my back tenfold, and my women especially.

  Gathering massive armies and possessing mages to kill me was one thing. Now, the Master could use any average creature to try and catch me off guard or lure me in. The thought of him trying to get at my own women to do it though, made my blood burn, but I didn’t doubt he’d be foolish enough to try it.

  It was all pretty elven, actually, and the thought relieved my irritation a little bit. At least I’d gotten used to the approach over the last few weeks.

  While I tried to enjoy a brief lull in our constant efforts in defeating the Master, Aurora took to asking Deya nearly as many questions as Dragir had tried, but she couldn’t care less about the rune. She wanted to know everything about the sea dragons.

  The beautiful elf was wondering aloud over whether she could transmute through all dragons, or only her sea dragons, when the half-elf suddenly shushed her and sat up at attention.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked immediately.

  Aurora furrowed her brow and listened closely while my hand slid to my holster, but then her eyes went wide, and she gasped.

  Before anyone could move, the half-elf leapt right over us and sprinted for the path, and she quickly disappeared over the edge of the cliff without another word.

  “Shit,” I cursed and hopped up with my revolver drawn and at the ready.

  Cayla held her rifle in hand when we left Deya safe in the cove and ran after Aurora, and I racked my brain as I tried to imagine who the hell had shown up to kill us this time.

  Luir was my first guess, but given that Oryk had seen us pass through Rhoemir only this afternoon, I was half-expecting an ambush in Onym’s honor any minute.

  Then again, Aeris and Pyrs could have taken matters into their own hands for once.

  We’d just made it to the ridge of the cliff when I heard Aurora’s voice through the trees ahead, but it sounded a lot like she was laughing rather than screaming.

  I furrowed my brow and came to a stop, and while I waited
in the grass at the cliffside with Cayla and Shoshanne, all I could hear was heavy rustling and more guttural laughter that was drawing closer every second.

  I wavered with my revolver still in hand, but then a fern shuddered at the edge of the tree line, and Aurora emerged giggling and strewn over the shoulder of a giant figure.

  Even in the dim evening light, I could tell his skin was distinctly green.

  “I thought I told you to get control over your woman?” Haragh grunted with a smirk as he hoisted Aurora off his broad shoulder.

  Chapter 21

  “Haragh!” I boomed. “You’re in Nalnora! And you’re not even eaten, look at you!”

  “Damn near was,” the half-ogre chuckled. “The horse wasn’t so lucky, but I made it. Whatever I’ve got growing here is festerin’, though.”

  Haragh tipped his elbow up to show us a giant blue boil with bright orange patches of what looked like fur growing on it.

  “Whoa.” I cringed and wrinkled my nose against the strange odor permeating from the boil. “I haven’t seen that one yet.”

  Shoshanne let out a husky chuckle and came over to leave a kiss on Haragh’s cheek.

  “I have something for that,” she assured him.

  “There we go!” I said with a decisive clap of my hands. “Problem solved.”

  Aurora gave a giddy little bounce as she latched herself around the half-ogre’s massive waist, and she sent me a huge grin.

  “This one’s always too excited to see me,” Haragh grunted.

  “Maybe it’s because I like you, you big old grump!” Aurora snorted.

  Seeing the two of them side by side made me happier than I’d been in weeks, and I sighed as my grin became almost as broad as Aurora’s.

  “Oh man,” I mused. “Can we take a minute and talk about how much I missed that big green face of yours? Now you’re here, and alive, and that’s a beautiful thing.”

  “Yeah, well I’m not marrying you either,” Haragh informed me with a smirk.

  I laughed and came over to clap the half-ogre on the shoulder, but he abruptly caught me up in a bear hug that caused my back to crack in at least four places.