by Dante King
There was no way that I was going to get there in time but, luckily, I had already prepared for this scenario, after that first near miss. I thrust my staff forward as the knife left the gnome’s hand and flashed like a wheel of liquid silver through the air.
My Flame Barrier popped up a foot in front of Vakash. The knife hit it and crumbled to ash. As soon as the magical barrier had done its work, it dissolved into a trillion light orange motes.
“Hey, what the ‘ell? That ain’t fightin’ fair that ain’t!” Bung-Eye Jeppi said in an aggrieved tone. He turned away from Vakash and looked around to see who had stopped him slaying his foe.
Vakash might have been old, but he knew an opening when he saw one. You didn’t become captain of an outfit like the Pixie Partyboat Company without exploiting those openings.
He scooped his cutlass up with his injured hand and swept it upward in an attempt to split his gnome enemy from chin to forehead.
Now, I didn’t really care about Bung-Eye Jeppi, so I let the will of the universe play out. Unfortunately, this meant that, instead of splitting the gnome’s face in half, Vakash’s blow sliced a line up Bung-Eye Jeppi’s cheek, as the gnome dodged the sneak attack.
“Hold on, Vakash, you daft bastard,” Bung-Eye Jeppi said as I skidded to a halt between the two combatants. “Can’t you see that this lubber,” and he jerked his small thumb in my direction, “is tryin’ to mess with the results of this fight?”
Vakash looked at me. There was nothing friendly about the gaze he leveled at me.
I turned to Bung-Eye Jeppi. “I’m not here for you, mate. I’m here for Vakash. He’s mine.”
“Yeah, you see, that ain’t going to work for me, stranger,” the gnome said. “Normally, I’d step aside and let you do as you would to this washed up piece of pond scum, but I need to be the one to finish him, see? I need to be the one so that I can take control of the PPC.”
There was no point bandying words. I knew when a fight was unavoidable.
“Fine,” I said, and utilized my newest spell, conjuring a Frostfire Golem.
The Frostfire Golem formed from the feet upward, building itself up in the space of a couple of seconds until it was six feet tall. It looked like a roughly hewn ice statue of a man veined with threads of molten fire.
Without so much as a how d’you do, it lumbered toward Vakash.
The little gnome gritted his silver teeth and spat at my feet.
“It’s like that is it?” he said in a shrill voice, like a possessed Furby.
With blinding speed, he flicked the rest of his knives, one after the other in rapid succession, at Vakash, trying to end the orc before I could. The four remaining daggers thunked into the back of the Frostfire Golem, sending cracks spiderwebbing across its shoulder blades.
Things were really heating up inside The Shark Bait Tavern, going from Jalapeño to Carolina Reaper even as I lunged toward the gnome. I knew I had to end things quickly, otherwise we were liable to be swamped.
As my Frostfire Golem attempted to crush Vakash with icy fists that simultaneously burned with a blue flame, I engaged the gnome.
But, boy, was that little motherfucker a slippery customer.
Jeppi had backed out of the fighting circle, stepping over the burning line of bloodlet powder and, as I closed with him, he kicked it up into my face. I used a quick burst of Flame Flight to propel myself over the burning powder and flip over the gnome. His arm suddenly morphed into a rapier blade as I landed behind him. I tried to touch him on the shoulder with my staff and hit him with a jolt of Paralyzing Zap, but the little prick spun like a rabbit and smacked my staff away with his rapier arm.
Then, for the first time in my life, I had myself a swashbuckling hand-to-hand encounter.
We moved backward and forward; first Bung-Eye Jeppi attacked with his sword, and I blocked with my staff, then viceversa. With my naturally quick reflexes and the fact that I had watched Hook about seven-thousand times as a kid, I was able to stave off the gnome’s attacks—though there were a couple of hairy moments.
I dived at Bung-Eye Jeppi during a lull in our back and forth, but the little gnome ducked easily. I sailed over the top of him and rolled over a table. The gnome conjured his six revolving daggers once more and threw two at me, but I flipped the table up to block them, and they thudded into the wood.
There were a few small fires burning in the tavern now, and some of the smarter brawlers were getting out before the building became the biggest oven in Buccaneer’s Finger, or simply sank into the Hardfought Bay.
The table shuddered as a third and fourth knife smacked into it.
“You goin’ to hide behind there until I die of old age, you lily-livered bastard?” Bung-Eye Jeppi jeered.
“Not fucking likely,” I called back through gritted teeth.
I pressed my staff to the surface of the table and let loose with a tasty little Fireball—not big enough to shatter the table into fragments, but large enough to send the heavy wooden bench flying straight at the gnome at about thirty miles per hour.
It caught the cocky little shit square, lifting him from his child-sized two feet, driving him across the tavern and into the far wall with a meaty crunch. The boards behind him cracked, and a grimy window above him shattered. The table fell forward, revealing a slightly flatter Bung-Eye Jeppi.
“Neeeeh,” he wheezed, blood bubbling through a nose that looked like a compressed tomato, and flopped forward onto the floor.
An explosion rocked the building, and I staggered sideways.
“Captain!” Barry called, zooming through the bedlam so that he floated at my side. “Might I suggest that we get out of here? Some of Bung-Eye Jeppi’s shipmates saw what you just did to him, and they’re far from happy about it. Only Vakash’s pals are stopping them from tearing you a fresh asshole.”
“And that good will is about to run its course,” I said, turning to where my Frostfire Golem had herded Vakash into a corner.
There were cracks all over the magically conjured creature and chunks had been hacked out of him by Vakash’s razor-sharp cutlass. As I ran to engage, the old orc—who looked fairly exhausted, his big black tongue lolling over his bottom lip—conjured up another silver parrot. The magical bird squawked and spat out another ball of lightning, and the Frostfire Golem shattered.
Vakash gave a small crow of delight and slashed his cutlass through the air.
Then, his face changed from delight to confusion, as my little innocuous-looking Magma Bomb rolled to a stop at his feet.
“What the fuck is this, then?” the orc growled.
The parrot squawked.
The explosion blew out a hole in the wall and vaporized Vakash the Vile and his goddamn parrot in a gout of orange and purple flames. Clumps of sticky magma sprayed across the room and set furniture and pirates ablaze.
I was expecting some sort of magical rush of light as the soul left Vakash’s obliterated body. Maybe a whizzing whirl of invisible force that was sucked into one of the skulls. What actually happened though, was a gentle warmth on my wrist. Looking down, I saw that one of the diamond skulls had filled with a green fog. It was the same color as Vakash’s skin.
That was a confirmation in my book.
“Done,” I said to myself, “let’s get the fuck out of here!”
Using Barry as a ghostly guiding light, I followed him to the exit, grabbing Enwyn, Mortimer, Idman, and Odette on the way. With more than a little difficulty, we managed to fight our way outside and into the comparatively fresh air of the street.
My friends and I were coated in soot and blackened by smoke. Enwyn’s face was covered in blood, but when I asked her if she was all right, she assured me it wasn’t hers. Idman had a nicely swollen lip, and there was a fire smoldering deep in Odette’s eyes. Mortimer looked as placid as ever, not even a bead of sweat present on his brow.
We backed out of the smoking, flaming ruin of The Shark Bait Tavern. There were still pockets of random fighting, but wor
d was obviously spreading that my buddies and I were responsible for the killing of two of Buccaneer’s Finger’s most gainful employers.
“How are we going to make it back to the portal stones?” I asked out of the corner of my mouth to Mortimer.
Mortimer stretched his neck to one side and then the other. “Yes, the odds on us surviving this little caper have lengthened considerably, haven’t they?”
That was far from helpful and, what was more, Mortimer looked quite pleased with this turn of events.
We backed out into the square that we had passed through earlier. A bottle whizzed out of the growing crowd, but Mortimer plucked it deftly from the air and sent it flying back. It shattered in the face of a rage-filled Storm Elemental, who was practically frothing at the mouth, and knocked her tumbling off the edge of the dock and into the sea.
That did not endear us to the locals.
“I didn’t want things to come to this,” Odette said suddenly, “but desperate times call for…”
“Desperate measures?” I said, hitting a furious Frost Elemental with a Paralyzing Zap and stopping him in his tracks.
“I was going to say dragons,” Odette said and threw a handful of her Enchanted Ashes over her shoulders.
There was a rumble, and the decking below our feet quivered and shuddered. Water sloshed against the pylons to which the boards were fixed.
The mob went quiet.
A Bone Dragon smashed its way up through the boards, screeching and roaring like a steam train in distress. Water dripped from its animated skeleton, and wooden boards as long as two men and an inch thick went flying into the air like straws.
“Everyone, get aboard!” Odette commanded. In a swirl of skirts, she was up the side of the insane skeletal monster, Mortimer following right behind.
None of us needed telling twice. Already the mass gathering of pirates was growing again, building like lava broiling within a volcano. We clambered aboard, as the dragon swept a few brave—or particularly drunk—pirates through the window of a net maker’s shop in a satisfying cacophony of screams and broken glass.
Then, the Bone Dragon launched itself upward, the ragged membrane of its wings beating against the air as it hauled itself into the sky.
“Was that a close enough call for everyone?” Idman asked drily as we rose above the roofs of the town. A few spells flashed up into the air behind us, and a crossbow quarrel rattled off one of the dragon’s ribs.
“It’s not over yet!” I said, looking back over my shoulder. “We’ve got company!”
I was stoked about being able to say ‘We’ve got company!’ in a real-life situation, but apart from that, there was little to like about the scenario. Three little rowboat looking vessels, carrying two men apiece were boosting up into the air in pursuit.
“Air wherries,” Odette said, over the rushing of the wind.
The wherry boats, propelled by magic, zoomed up to follow us. We didn’t have far to go to make it to the portal stones, but we couldn’t land with these guys—literally—on our tail.
A pink burst of magic exploded just beyond the dragon’s left wingtip like a magenta flack shell.
“Let’s take them out quick!” I yelled. “The sooner we’re back in Nevermoor, the better!”
Odette banked the dragon left, and the three wherry boats followed. One strayed a little too close, and the Bone Dragon’s boney tail lashed out. The very tip caught one of the pirates in the chest and flung him from the boat and into the void. He disappeared with a short shriek.
More magic exploded around us. I felt like an Allied bomber flying over the fields of France, trying to avoid the shells that were exploding in the sky all around it.
Enwyn suddenly leaned across, locked her feet between two of the Bone Dragon’s ribs, and let off a Fireball that ripped toward one of the boats. It caught the vessel dead-on, just as it tried to execute an evasive dive. The boat burst apart in a shower of flaming splinters. The two charred bodies of the crew were sent spinning toward the bay below.
Odette steered the dragon through a few impressively tight turns, switching this way and that to avoid the barrage of fire being shot at us from the three remaining pirates in the other two boats.
I tried my luck shooting some Frost Shards at one of the boats, but they embedded themselves into the keel as the wherry dodged aside.
And that was when I ran out of patience.
I flipped around on the back of the dragon so that I was facing backward. With my staff pointed at the wherry carrying the two pirates, I cast a Blazing Bolt. As soon as I had released the spell, I erected a Flame Barrier right into the path of the other wherry. The vessel crunched into the fiery wall and began slowly spiralling downward, much to the distress of the helmsman.
“Dive!” I cried.
Odette asked no questions, but pushed the dragon into a steep, fast dive.
The remaining pirates in their boat easily dodged my Blazing Bolt and hurtled after us. They were so engrossed in their pursuit and hurling sizzling bolts of white energy that they didn’t realize that I had retaken control of my Blazing Bolt and turned it.
Thanks to the dungeon sessions led by Barry, I was now able to take better control over that particular spell. With my hair blowing around my face and my stomach clenched, I guided the Blazing Bolt into the rear of the last wherry. The crackling ball of red energy completely disintegrated the hull of the ship and blew the sailors into burger meat, such was the intensity of the mana and will that I put behind the spell.
I was only just in time.
The Bone Dragon used its wings to brake its dive at the last second. The necromantic beast landed with a teeth-rattling thump on a strip of beach not far from the graffiti-covered portal stones through which we had arrived at Buccaneer’s Finger.
As its massive clawed feet touched the ground, there was a great rending, splintering, crashing sound from behind us as the last wherry—the one I’d crippled with the Flame Barrier—dropped out of the sky and plowed into the beach about fifty yards away. There was not much left of it, as I might have expected for something that had just plummeted out of the firmament, but somehow the orc sky-sailor was still on his steering bench.
He looked dazed.
I wasn’t surprised.
He stared at us through bleary eyes and said, in a small voice, “Well, blow me down!”
And the wherry exploded in a massive pink fireball of crackling stored magic.
I shielded my eyes against the glare. Idman ducked as something that looked suspiciously like a severed, roasted leg whizzed over his head.
“Consider your timbers shivered,” I said, lowering my hand.
Mortimer slid easily from the beast first and helped down Enwyn, who didn’t look all that pleased to take the Chaos Mage’s hand.
When all of us had clambered down from the massive Bone Dragon, Odettte made a gesture at the Bone Dragon. The summoned beast fell to pieces, the magic that knitted its bones together coming apart and dissipating in an instant.
“Come,” Odette said, taking me by the hand. “Let’s get back through the stones before anymore of these orc privateers and gnomes of fortune can show up.”
This time, I welcomed the helter-skelter tumble that accompanied the trip through the portal stones like an old friend. It meant that, even if it was just for a millisecond, we could relax.
When we arrived at the Nevermoor portal terminal, the old dwarf, Petram, was right where we had left him. We didn’t bother to wake the sexhausted pensioner as we strolled down the path, our boots crunching on the pure white gravel.
“I always find,” Mortimer said, fingering one of his mutton chops thoughtfully, “that the liberating of a soul works up quite the appetite.”
I frowned at him. Maybe Mortimer wasn’t as straight as he’d first seemed. I was beginning to understand that every Chaosbane was slightly mad in their own special way. Once more, I was visited by the thought that their family Christmases must be a real event.
“We could probably all benefit from rehydrating and filling our bellies,” I agreed. “Let’s pop down to an inn, get a bite to eat, wet our lips with something cold, then move onto Ratfink the Thief.”
Chapter Eleven
Only Odette Scaleblade, Mortimer, and I ended up sitting around a large table in a corner of the colorfully-named Cock and Bull Inn. We nursed tall, foaming mugs of cloud cider, made from cloud apples. It was essentially the same as normal cider, although, after about eight pints, the drinkers found their heads feeling so light that it was impossible to stay sitting in their seats.
It was just before lunch, and the trade was starting to pick up inside the Cock and Bull. The gentle murmur of conversation rose to something approaching the usual volume of talk. I leaned back in my chair and admired the low, smoke-stained ceilings, dark exposed beams hung with horse brass, and cosy booths with squashy, straw-stuffed couches. The Cock and Bull was the sort of inn that leant itself to quiet, intimate talk. It was why I had suggested, out of Nevermoor’s plethora of pubs, that we go there for a debrief.
I had sent Barry back to the fraternity house to report to the boys and ensure that they didn’t require his services. As important as it was that we take out our three targets, collect their soul energy, and use it to try and awaken my old man, I didn’t want to deprive them of their training. When it came down to it, the fraternity would enter the Mage Games Qualifiers as a team—as a single entity made up of five parts. I wasn’t going to jeopardize their learning by hogging our poltergeist. Besides, I had already utilized Barry’s help at the floating pirate town. I couldn’t see us needing his specific expertise for the next job.
Barry wasn’t the only person to leave our little company. Idman and Enwyn both left too.
Enwyn explained that she had to return to the Academy to inform Reginald Chaosbane on how our mission had gone, as well as having to furnish a representative of the Arcane Council with a bogus report.
Idman Thunderstone had left with Barry. As much as he complained about the poltergeist, and lamented about bunking with him in the dungeons, I thought that the former Warden of the Eldritch Prison had a soft spot for the poltergeist. He was always giving him shit, picking at Barry’s faults, but I was beginning to think that it was his particular kind of banter. I might even have been witnessing the thawing stage of their relationship, like when Riggs had to win over Murtaugh in the very first Lethal Weapon movie. It was either that, or Idman was going to snap one day and curse Barry into a thousand ghostly particles.
