by Dante King
“Kurt,” Yarina said, sighing with relief. “You’re okay.”
I nodded. “Where’s Winnie?”
“Worried about me, handsome?” Winnie’s voice came from just behind me. I spun around and saw Winnie’s signature mischievous smile dance across her face. “Hi, you.”
“Are you hurt?”
“A couple of bruises. A small burn on my right arm. Nothing that won’t heal.”
“Yarina?”
“Broken shoulder. But it’s mending already.”
I could sense her regeneration abilities kicking in even as we spoke. Both Winnie and Yarina looked to me with curiosity.
“Kalazar is gone,” I said, holding up my hand to reveal the soul seal ring on my finger.
Yarina nodded. “We thought as much.”
“Did you see what happened from down here?”
“We saw the sky change,” Yarina said. “We saw the lightning, and I felt—I’m not sure what I felt. I just knew it was something big.”
I nodded. “Today marks a change for the people of Trysca. And they paid for it with the lives of countless honorable men and women. We should take a moment to pay tribute to our dead.”
“My father,” Lillian said, her voice breaking. “His body is up there by the Waygate.”
“We’ll see to it,” Yarina said, gesturing to one of her spellswords.
“No,” Bathos said, as he walked up to us. “Archmage Barlin was an important part of the Institute. He fought hard for it from the moment he was nominated to the board. We will retrieve his body and give him all the respect he is due.”
Lillian’s eyes welled with tears at the mention of his name. I wrapped my arm around her and pulled her close.
“Yarina explained what happened,” Bathos continued. “We know that the necromancer possessed Archmage Barlin. I for one am sure that your father gave him the fight of his life before succumbing to the possession.”
“Thank you, Headmaster Bathos,” Lillian said, without looking up.
“Yarina tells me we have you to thank for saving our city, Kurt,” Bathos said.
“I couldn’t have done it without Lillian, Winnie, or Yarina. If I am to thank for saving the city, then so are they.”
Bathos bowed his head to all three of the incredible women standing around me. Each one was starkly different, but what united them was their fierce strength and their independent spirit.
“I do not mean to minimize your contribution,” Bathos said, stumbling slightly over his words as he looked between the three of them. “All three of you are a credit to this city.”
Bathos glanced at Yarina. “Ms. Windryder, you have your calling as a devotee to the God of Light, and I do not wish to interfere in that.” He turned to Winnie and Lillian. “But we would gladly welcome the two of you into our ranks. The Institute would greatly benefit from your gifts, and I dare say you would greatly benefit from all the Institute has to offer.”
Winnie didn’t look surprised. “No, thank you, Headmaster. My place is by Kurt’s side. He will teach me far more than the Institute ever could.”
I suppressed a smile while Bathos nodded grimly. I could tell he was slightly offended by her less than gracious rejection of his offer, but he had to swallow his pride in light of everything we had just accomplished.
“What about you, Ms. Cyntria? Your father devoted his life to the Institute. I am sure he would have been pleased to know his daughter was honing her craft within its walls.”
Lillian paused for a moment. The last remnants of her tears still clung to her eyelashes, but her blue eyes shone of their own accord. “My father devoted his life to keeping me safe. I think he would have wanted me to be happy. Thank you for your kind offer, Headmaster Bathos. But I’m going to have to decline it. The Institute is not for me. I will hone my craft outside its majestic walls.”
Bathos looked visibly disappointed, but he inclined his head in an attempt to be gracious. “If you ever change your minds, you know where to find us. Now, if you will excuse me. I will see to it that Archmage Barlin’s body is retrieved.”
Bathos favored us with a parting bow and then moved toward the small group of Institute mages licking their wounds a little further down the hall.
“Well, that was certainly interesting,” Yarina said. “Personally, I think you should have accepted headmaster Bathos’s offer, Winnie. You could use some discipline.”
“Oh, I couldn’t agree more.” Winnie wrapped her hand around my arm. “Kurt, you’re free to discipline me anytime you want.”
I winked, but I was still aware of Lillian tucked underneath my arm. She was reeling from the loss of her father, and I wanted to be sensitive to that.
“Come on,” I said softly into her ear. “You need to sit down for a moment.”
I led Lillian away from Winnie and Yarina, to an isolated area in the corner of Waygate Center Station.
“Is there anything I can get you?” I asked. Only now I noticed she had some small cuts and scrapes along her hands and a few that snaked up her delicate neck.
“I’m fine.”
“Wait here. I will send one of the healers to help with those cuts.”
“It’s nothing.”
“You’ve been through a lot today. Asking for help doesn’t make you weak. We all need help from time to time.”
“Even you?” Her eyes bored into mine.
“Even me. I needed you today. If you hadn’t shown up when you did, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now.”
A ripple of pride flushed across her face, imbuing her cheeks with color. “I was scared…”
“I wasn’t.”
“You weren’t?”
I shook my head. “I had complete faith in you. I wasn’t scared because I knew you could deactivate the seal—and you did.”
Lillian smiled. “Thank you, Kurt.”
I smiled and kissed her hand gently. After a moment of silence, I called over a passing healer. I left Lillian in his expert hands and walked back to Yarina and Winnie. Winnie was lying against a fallen splinter rock, and Yarina was still leading her soldiers.
“No wonder you’re so bossy,” Winnie said lazily. “You’ve had so much practice.”
Yarina narrowed her eyes at her.
A small part of me was secretly glad they hadn’t changed.
“Will you make yourself useful, instead of just lying there like you’re sitting for a portrait,” Yarina said impatiently.
“Do you think they’ll commission a portrait of me? I did just save their city.”
“You helped save their city. And besides—it’s your city too.”
Winnie shrugged. “I don’t know about that. It’s a place I moved to, I don’t know that it’s my city though.”
“It doesn’t matter whether we think of Trysca as our home or not,” I said, stepping forward between them. “It’s our duty to protect it. Just as we should protect any city that comes under fire from the tainted mages.”
“Hear, hear,” Yarina said.
“Whatever you say, boss,” Winnie said, looking at me with naked veneration that bordered on worship. “Wherever you go, I go.”
I smiled. “You might regret having said that.”
“Never. I made my choice the moment I laid eyes on you. If we’re going to spend the rest of our lives hunting down tainted mages and necromancers, then so be it.”
“Speaking of tainted mages,” I said, turning to Yarina. “What happened down here after I took off after Kalazar?”
“I wanted to follow you, to help you take on Kalazar, but the fighting was too thick and I couldn’t find a way out. We were winning though. Our forces were slowly overpowering Kalazar’s minions. And then, in the midst of battle, without any warning whatsoever, the greater summons that Kalazar had reanimated suddenly dropped to the floor.”
“That was how you knew he was gone.”
“Yes. I suspected you had overpowered him. That was the only way his minions would have rev
erted back to their inanimate corpse states.”
“When the greater undead fell, the tainted mages we were fighting abandoned the battle,” Winnie continued. “They knew that, without Kalazar, they had no hope of winning. We tried to catch them all, but some succeeded in getting away.”
“They ran?”
Yarina nodded. “At least half a dozen of them.”
I sighed. “So this isn’t over.”
“Far from it. Kalazar wasn’t working in isolation. In fact, I don’t even think he was the ringleader of this play for power.”
“What are you saying?” Winnie asked.
“I suspect that Kalazar was working for someone. Someone more powerful than him.”
I saw the color drain from Winnie’s face. “The only being with more power than Kalazar would be…a Chaos God,” she whispered.
Yarina’s silence was all the confirmation we needed.
“But the Chaos Gods are supposed to be imprisoned,” Winnie said.
“They’re supposed to be, but I think someone set them free. Think about it. Why would all this happen now? The Terminus Seal has been contained within the Arcanum for decades now. No one tried to steal it before. So why now? Something has changed, I can feel it. This was only a battle. The war is yet to come. It’s on our doorstep.”
This sounded familiar…I realized Yarina had said those same words to me when we had first met. She had rescued me from a long day of answering the same questions in the guardhouse as per Archmage Barlin’s orders. She had stood before me, framed in sunlight, and told me that the war was at our doorstep. She had changed my life with those words. It hadn’t been that long ago, and yet it felt as though a lifetime had passed.
“Do you really think there’s a Chaos God behind all of this?” I asked.
Yarina nodded.
I gritted my teeth. “What do we do now?”
“We need to find the corrupt mages Kalazar was working with. Find them, and we just might find out who’s behind this.”
“And then we kill whoever that is,” I said. “Divine being or not.”
Yarina nodded.
I glanced back over my shoulder to where Lillian was sitting. I realized I owed the truth to Yarina and Winnie; so I tried to put into words the strangest things I had ever seen.
When I had finished the story, Yarina’s eyes clouded over. “That makes Lillian a target,” she said.
“It also makes her a hundred times more dangerous,” Winnie added.
“We’ll keep her safe,” I said adamantly.
“What if she doesn’t want to stick with us?” Winnie asked. “What if she wants her freedom? Now that her father is gone, she has complete control of her life.”
“I’m not suggesting we imprison her,” I said. “I’m just saying we present her with a choice.”
Winnie sighed. “Looks like I’m going to have to compete with two instead of one now.”
As I chuckled, two city guard soldiers walked up to a grim-faced Yarina. It was hard to say if her expression had become grimmer when Winnie had told her the bad news that applied equally to her.
One of the soldiers was of an average height and had curly bronze hair and a slow smile, while the older guard was taller and more heavily set. The younger guard presented Yarina with a fresh cloak that distinguished her as one of the commanders of the guard.
“For your visit to the temple,” he said.
“Thank you, Nestor.” Yarina took the cloak from his hands.
“You deserve this,” the other guard said, and with that and a curt nod, they moved on.
I looked at Yarina with raised eyebrows. “What was that?”
Yarina took a breath, obviously trying to contain the smile on her lips. “I have been offered the chance to take the priestess examination at the Temple of Rymi. If all goes well, I could become a higher-level devotee.”
“Is that supposed to be a good thing?” Winnie asked.
I poked her in the side with my elbow and smiled at Yarina. “Congratulations, Yarina,” I said. “You earned the right to take that test. I have no doubt you’ll pass it.”
Yarina looked uncertainly at the fresh cloak cradled in her arms. “I don’t know, I’ve been waiting for this for so long…”
“Which is exactly why you’ll pass.”
She nodded. “I would recommend you visit the temple too. It might prove to help you.”
“Are you trying to convert him to your fanaticism?” Winnie said.
“The temple is a site of holy magic,” Yarina continued. “And we’re going to need all the help we can get in this fight.”
“I would like to visit your Temple,” I said, more out of affection and respect for Yarina than anything else.
Winnie sighed. “I hope I won’t be pelted with holy water on entrance.”.
Yarina laughed. “It might help cleanse your dirty mind.”
“Hey, I like my mind dirty. I think Kurt does too.”
I smiled playfully at Winnie and glanced back at Lillian. It seemed the healer was almost done tending to her wounds. Behind them, a procession of the Institute mages descended the Waygate steps. They were carrying Barlin’s body.
“Come on,” I said, as I set off to Lillian.
Glancing up at us, and then behind her to where we were looking, she got up slowly and walked up to meet us. She moved straight into my embrace, then walked along with us close to my side. I felt her fingers twitch toward mine, so I reached out and squeezed her hand.
The procession stopped in front of Lillian, allowing her a moment to look upon her father’s body one last time. Archmage Barlin looked peaceful in death. The evil that had clung to his features during the possession had slipped away, and only traces of his own personality remained. There was nobility in his face, strength and character, and I felt a spasm of regret overtake me. I wished I had been able to save him—for Lillian’s sake if nothing else. This was a model man, someone to emulate. Someone who held power with dignity.
Lillian’s hand trembled in mine, and she reached out with her other hand to touch her father’s forehead gently, for just an instant. Then she stepped back and nodded firmly for the Institute mages to continue the procession.
Bathos approached Lillian and me, and I noticed him glance at our entwined hands. “We can take you back to the Spire, Ms. Cyntria,” he said.
“Thank you, you’re too kind. But I can find my own way home.”
Her voice was still dull with the ache of loss, but I could already sense her marshaling strength, and magic. It was in her—it was an instinct. She may have seemed vulnerable and innocent, but she had a warrior’s spirit.
“This is not the end, is it?” Lillian asked, turning to me once the procession had disappeared from sight.
“No,” I replied as Winnie and Yarina came up in front of us. “Kalazar was just the first wave. We have more battles to fight and more threats to deal with.”
Lillian nodded. “I’m coming with you.”
Winnie and Yarina exchanged a glance.
“It won’t be easy,” Yarina said. “We’ll face things we never even dreamed could be real.”
Lillian’s jaw locked in determination. “They killed my father. I have to avenge him. I will avenge him—or die in the attempt.”
I nodded once. “You’re with us?”
Lillian’s disarming gaze was unflinching. “Yes.”
I smiled as I looked around at the three amazing women who had pledged themselves to the same mission, my new and only purpose in life. I pitied anyone—beast, human, mage, god—who dared to cross our path. Whatever challenge we faced, we would tackle it head-on.
“That’s settled then,” I said. “Now let’s go.”
With that, the four of us made our way out of the broken remains of Waygate Center Station.
“Can I ask you a—personal question?” Lillian asked, coming up to my side.
“Shoot.”
“Why would you do this? You have no one to avenge,
no promise binding you, no guild to answer to. Why would you risk your life for this city?”
I turned to her with excitement roaring in my gut. Yes, there would be danger at every corner. But there would be adventure too.
“It’s what I do,” I said, never slowing my pace, and looking her in her admiring eyes. “I am a mage slayer.”
End of Book 1
Want More Mage Slayer?
Want more Mage Slayer novels? Please leave a review here to let us know you’d like more. You can also join Dante’s Facebook Reader Group and follow his Facebook Page. Or his email newsletter.
Amazon is often slow to update readers on new releases, so the best way to get notified is by clicking this link and then clicking the Follow button.
Have you read Dante King’s necromancer story, Bone Lord? Check it out on Amazon.
We look forward to sharing more stories with you!
Do you like Gamelit & LitRPG stories? Check out the Gamelit Society Facebook Group for recommendations and fun!
Do you like stories where the main character has more than one love interest? Check out the Harem Lit Facebook group.
About the Authors
Dante King is an author of Men’s Adventure fiction in various flavors. His books involve strong male protagonists who know what they want and do what’s required to get it.
You can connect with him at DanteKingAuthor.com
Ryan Vermont is a first-time writer of fantasy and science fiction. He loves kickass heroes and fast-paced stories.
