by Dante King
Chaosbane was the epitome of a man completely at his ease; gazing around at the pretty, biscuit-tin town with its thatched cottages and manicured gardens that were stuffed with a host of plants that were completely unfamiliar to me. He alternated between whistling tunelessly and humming snatches of what, if we had been back on my world, I would have sworn was Back in Black by AC/DC.
“Sir,” I said, thinking that ‘sir’ was better than ‘buddy’, “why is it that you called out Storm Mage? In my vision Enw—someone—explicitly said Creation Mage to me. She—they—pointed at me and everything.”
“Firstly, Justin,” Chaosbane said, “I ask you—I entreat you—to refrain from calling me ‘sir’. It ages a man by at least ten years, you know, mate.”
“Right,” I said, relieved that there was one less formality to worry about. “Well, Chaosbane, why—”
“I intentionally mislead the gathering in the Lambent Hall because I did not deem it prudent for the knowledge that you are, indeed, a Creation Mage to become public intelligence straight off the bat, as it were.”
“Why?”
“Because there are people and institutions that might not take too kindly to the idea that the Mazirian Academy has such a member studying under its roof. While you’re not the only Creation Mage in the known worlds, you are one of a select few.”
We walked slowly across a small bridge that spanned a railway track back on Earth. Here, in this world, the stone-built bridge leapt a lazy river that flowed sluggishly along underneath us. The organic smell of the river rose to meet us, and I breathed deep. It was a good smell. Things like smells made this whole nutty experience so much more tangible to me.
I found that I was fidgety. I was so goddamn excited to be here, to be on the cusp of entering a real school of supernatural, that all I wanted to do was get cracking. I felt like a bibliophile who was rushing through the pages, trying to get to the big reveal.
“Look, Chaosbane,” I said with as much patience as I could muster, “I understand that there might be some stuff that you don’t think you can or should tell me, information that you think I’m not ready for and that I might be shocked to learn, yadda yadda yadda. Trust me, man, I’ve watched enough shitty TV and read plenty of Lee Child, and I have learned this: just spill the goddamn beans at the start so that everyone knows where they stand.”
If Chaosbane hadn’t understood some of the references that I had used, he did not show it. He regarded me for a good while as we strode along, cool as a salmon in a fishmonger’s window. Holding my eye, he performed the neat trick of stepping over a sleeping cat that happened to be lying in the road, without ever even glancing at it. The sleeping cat was something I imagined would probably be found in my world too—and, in fact, I later learned that cats were the one life-form that transcend worlds. I know, I wasn’t surprised either.
“Have you heard the expression, ‘Don’t dig up more snakes than you can kill?’” Chaosbane asked me.
“No.”
“Neither have I,” the bewildering bastard said, “but if I had, I would take it to mean that one should try one’s best not to take on more risk than one is capable of dealing with.”
“Seems like a sensible policy,” I conceded, “but I think that the both of us know that I’m not a helpless little kid. You could ask Bernard, if you could find his ear.”
“Quite, but caution is not something that should be lightly thrown aside.”
“Fair enough,” I said, “but I also don’t want to be wandering about this magical world wondering if something I do is going to set off some chain of events that could easily have been avoided had I had just a bit more info, you know?”
Chaosbane nodded and smoothed his mustaches with a perfectly manicured finger. “Do you know what a Creation Mage actually is, Justin? That is to say, do you know what the other name for Creation magic is?”
“Nope.”
“Sex magic.”
“Get the fuck out of here!”
“I will not,” Chaosbane replied evenly.
“So that’s what the Red Hot Chili Peppers were talking about,” I muttered to myself.
“Pardon?” said Chaosbane.
“Nothing.”
“As I was saying,” Chaosbane said, “Sex magic is a complex branch of Elder magic. The potential for power is extremely high. The reason for this is something that I shall tell you someday soon.”
“Creation Mages,” I said, “they’re rare, are they?”
“As virgins in a whorehouse, to use a piece of colorful local parlance,” Chaosbane replied.
I nodded, trying my hardest not to let the smile that was threatening to overwhelm my features get the better of me.
“And, they’re prone to getting pretty powerful?” I asked, trying to be casual.
“Oh, yes,” Chaosbane said. “Some of the most gifted magic users in the history of Avalonia were Creation Mages.”
Hell fuckin’ yeah! I thought. That is exactly what I’m talking about! Yes, it would have been cool to only be able to do a few tricks, but now I find out that I’ve got some serious potential at my fingertips! Let’s get learning, for God’s sake!
“Interesting,” I said, struggling to keep my voice steady.
“Indubitably,” Chaosbane said. “Now, if I may, allow me to give you some advice.”
My head was full of fantasies that mostly revolved around becoming a sort of Superman meets Dr. Strange type of badass. I looked at the staff in my hand. I guess there’d be a bit of Gandalf in the mix too.
“Fire away,” I said.
“Ah, the exact thing I was going to tell you not to do.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean, unless you are one-hundred percent sure that you want a woman around forever, I would keep your staff pointing at the ground.”
I laughed at this. “Is this something all the new students get? The safe-sex talk?”
“Justin,” Chaosbane said, his eyes twinkling, “I doubt that you’re ever likely to know what safe sex is again.”
I felt like a kid who had been given a key to the fireworks factory and a box of matches and then been told that he was not allowed to strike a flame.
“You want me to, ah, keep my wand in my…” I strained for a metaphor and came up short, “...pants?”
“For now.”
“All right, I’ll try,” I said, thinking of the pool. “But I’m not going to make any promises.”
“Said like a true freshman,” Chaosbane stated.
I cleared my throat. “Where are we going anyway?”
“I thought that you’d have a few questions that you might want answers to, so I elected to walk you in person to your new fraternity,” the Headmaster said.
“Where is it?”
We rounded a corner that, in my world, an abandoned DVD rental store squatted on. Here, there was a graveyard—rows of crooked gravestones standing like broken teeth among the tussocky grass, a few mausoleums covered with ivy dotted here and there—and behind that, where on Earth there would have been nothing but a large hole in the ground, was—
“There is your fraternity house, Justin,” Chaosbane said.
It was a craggy hill faced with low cliffs, and on that hill was a tower.
“Well,” I said, “at least I’m not going to forget what my house looks like.”
It was a crooked and leaning edifice, built all in dark stone. Its windows were unevenly spaced, pointy in shape, and many of them were curtained. It had a few small minarets that stuck out from the top of it like horns. It looked as if it had once been imposing, majestic, and impressive. However, now there was a definite air of dilapidation about the place. All in all, it reminded me of the sort of pad that Dracula’s less successful brother might hang out in.
“I love it,” I said.
As we got closer, walking up a path that led up the hillside, I could make out the thud of bass music permeating through the walls.
“I’ll leave y
ou here,” Chaosbane said at the gate to the garden, in which the chief landscaping feature was an old leather sofa that was so collapsed it looked like it had been tossed into the garden from an airplane.
“Teacher not wanting to cramp the student’s style?” I asked.
“Something like that.”
“Why did you choose this place for me?” I asked.
“Let’s just say that I selected this place and the young men that you are about to meet for a…purpose.”
I walked up the path, but after a few steps, I turned to ask Chaosbane when he’d tell me more about this whole intriguing Sex Mage deal and this mysterious-sounding purpose.
But the slick Headmaster had vanished.
“So fucking cool,” I said. “I’ve got to learn how to do that.”
I turned back to the Gothic building, just in time to see the door open and my fellow frat brothers march outside. My face split in a genuinely pleased grin.
Rick, Damien, and Nigel stood on the porch.
“Gentlemen,” I said.
Nigel dropped to the ground, wiped some sweat from his brow, and reached for the bottle of Green Fairy that I offered him. I’d assumed that this strong liquor was an Avalonian brand of absinthe, but, predictably, it turned out that it was an alcohol made from fermented green fairies. Yeah.
Still, I’ve only had about four swigs and I’m feeling goooood, I thought.
“And so,” Nigel said, waving his arms around to emphasize his point, “I was running along the edge of this roof, six stories up, while these two sisters that I had a bit of a thing for looked up at me and egged me on.”
Rick chuckled. Clearly, he had heard this yarn before.
“And?” I asked.
“Well, I thought I was doing quite a good job of it, you know—trying to act all nonchalant and stuff. Then, I made the rookie error of looking down—I figured I might be able to see down one of their shirts or something, you see.”
A look of blissful, yet painful, recollection passed over Nigel’s face. “I think the mishap took place because I did manage to see down one of their tops,” he said. “That’s what caused me to slip, I think.” He shivered. “It’s an unpleasant sensation, thinking that you’re plummeting to your death. I’d like to say that I screamed like a girl, but I fear that I’d be doing girls everywhere a disservice. It was more like some sort of terrified seagull.”
Damien snorted Green Fairy out through his nose at this description.
“But you didn’t die,” I said. “Unless you’re about to tell me you’re a ghost.”
Nothing would have surprised me at that point.
“Nope,” said Nigel. “I stopped three feet above the ground. Hovering, like I’d fallen into invisible jelly. I stayed there for about a minute, and the girls were long gone by the time my feet touched the ground.”
“So, that’s what got you into the Academy?” I asked Nigel.
Nigel colored a little. “Well, look,” he said defensively, “I know that it’s perhaps not the most impressive bit of Air magic, but you have to think that I only just—”
I held up my hand. The skinny dude had got my tone all wrong. “Nigel,” I said, “you were standing on air for a full minute.”
“Levitating,” Nigel corrected me automatically.
“Whatever. Man, if you don’t reckon that I think that’s awesome then you’re dead wrong.”
Nigel grinned appreciatively, hung his head so that his hair fell over his face, and shrugged.
“It’ll be even more awesome when I can use it to fly,” he said.
I shook my head in envy. “Nigel,” I said, “it sounds like you’re well on your way to full flight mode. I swear, if there’s a woman alive who doesn’t want to bone a dude who can fly, then I don’t want to meet her.”
Nigel pushed his glasses up his nose and took a swig of Green Fairy. He grimaced. “Only problem is,” he said meekly, “is that I’m afraid of heights.”
Everyone laughed at this, even Nigel.
“The world,” Rick rumbled, “is indeed a cruel place.”
Rick had already demonstrated his take on the rocky, armor-like skin that I had seen Bernard use back at the store. It had been cool, but I couldn’t help but think that Rick already looked like he could survive a fairly hefty stroke with a pickaxe.
“What about you, Damien?” I asked. “What have you got up your sleeve?”
This cheap gag elicited a few snorts from the other two—Damien wasn’t wearing a shirt. Seemed that he was constantly setting the damned things on fire by accident.
“Check it out,” Damien said. He snatched the almost empty bottle of Green Fairy off of Nigel, downed the rest, and tossed it into the air. As the bottle flipped back to earth, Damien crouched and extended his hand with his ring and middle finger pointing at the bottle. A globe of orange flame, about the size of a ping-pong ball, burst silently from his fingertips. It missed the bottle by a hand’s breadth and vanished into the night sky. The bottle landed, quite unharmed, on the busted sofa.
There was a moment of silence.
“Cool,” I said, “but it would’ve been cooler if you actually hit the bottle.”
Laughter erupted yet again. Damien folded over, slapping his thigh.
“Island wisdom dictates,” said Rick in his solemn voice, after a minute, “that the burned fire is the learned fire.”
There was a thoughtful pause in our little group’s banter.
“I’m not going to lie to you, Rick,” I said, “I don’t think that makes a fucking blind bit of sense.”
We dissolved into hysterics again.
“So,” I said, “it’s safe to say that everyone in this fraternity’s main goal is to actually learn how to use their powers to some degree?”
Nigel snorted. Then he choked out, “None of us might be that good yet, Justin, but you’re the worst!”
“How d’you figure?” I asked.
“You’re the only one who has managed to accidentally burst someone like a balloon with their powers!”
I opened my mouth to protest.
Suddenly, from beyond the gate, in the road that led up from the town to our place on the hill, there came a long roar of rage.
“What,” Rick said slowly, “the fuck was that?”
More indistinct yelling pervaded the night air. It sounded like someone was cursing, but in a language or languages that I had never heard before.
“Get that man a taxi!” Damien yelled drunkenly.
Suddenly, a gout of flame lit up the night. The four of us saw, illuminated just for an instance, the figure of—
“That’s goddamn Bradley Flamewalker,” Rick said. I could hear his teeth grinding even from where I stood five paces away.
“What’s got into him?” I asked.
Damien squinted. “I know,” he said, and there was a trace of trepidation in his voice. “He’s gone inferno.”
I cast a questioning eye at him.
“Means, he’s gone a little crazy,” Damien said. “It’s one of the hazards of pyromancy.”
From the edge of the garden where we stood, we could all see right down the hill to the graveyard at the bottom of it.
“Well, there’s only our frat house up here, and he’s coming this way,” Nigel pointed out. “It’s going to massively limit our chances of bringing girls back here if the place has been burned to the ground.”
His words struck me at my core. I’d be damned if I was going to let this jackass stop me from scoring any of the ladies at the Academy. Better to fry.
“Brothers,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”
Chapter Six
I’d been on the verge of strolling down the hill to confront Bradley when something tugged at my mind. For a moment, I thought it might be hesitation, but then I realized that it was something else. The nagging, insistent notion that I was forgetting something was not being supplied by my own brain—marinating in alcohol as it was right now—but was coming from some ex
ternal source. It was like someone tapping on your shoulder—if your shoulder was located in the very center of your spinal cord.
My staff.
I ran back to the frathouse and grabbed the staff, which I had left leaning against the porch railing. Something—the staff probably—told me that, if I was going to do this wizard-style, then the first lesson I should learn was that a wizard never leaves his vector behind.
“Do you. . . do you want us to come with you?” Nigel asked. He didn’t sound keen at all.
“Nah, you guys stay here. I’m going to make sure Bradley doesn’t come charging up here and set the house on fire,” I said. “I’m sure I can talk him out of it. Get him to cool down.”
Damian raised an eyebrow at my choice of words. “I wouldn't be so sure, not if that motherfucker really has gone inferno like I think he has. There’s a time for a bit of honey in the ear, and there’s a time for the stick.”
“I’ll try the honey,” I said, “but if that fails...” I raised the staff, and the orb at its tip flashed a malevolent cobalt blue. “I’ve got a stick that he can try his luck against.”
The others nodded.
I hefted the staff over my shoulder and hitched a friendly grin onto my face before I strolled down the crooked and overgrown garden path and out of the garden gate.
Bradley Flamewalker really was throwing a tantrum. He was also living up to his name, because I could see that he was leaving little sporadic patches of fire in his wake as he pinballed up the lonely road toward the top of the hill.
I’d always made it my policy not to let fear enter too much into my thinking. I’d always found, growing up, that more often than not the fear of something was usually far worse than the thing itself. My preferred method was never to give that fear or trepidation time to grow or spread. Walk out to face it and, when you were looking it in the eye, you often found that it was not half so bad as you had led yourself to believe. And, if the thing was as bad as you thought it was going to be, that ceased to matter, because you were facing it now and you had to concentrate to defeat it.