by King, Dante
I was turning into a regular old horndog, unable to chat or look at a woman without quietly fantasizing about what they might be like in the sack.
I walked along the fenceline, trying to clear the mental image of Kryn’s tasty titties from out of my mind, with little to no success.
The thing was, it wasn’t as if I couldn’t have had sex with a whole cast of women. They were quite literally lining up. Aunt Ruth, a no-nonsense milfy member of the Chaosbane clan, had actually had to shoo away a couple of dwarven women who had tried tunneling into the ranch house cellar.
This was saying something for the keenness of the dwarves, as dwarf women, despite what modern fantasy had led me to believe, did not have beards and were not prone to mining or hoarding gold. They were actually stunning. Built along the lines of Amazonian warriors, with muscular backs and large arms, they looked like they could get hold of a man and never let him free again—as if any right-minded man would have wanted to escape.
My ladies had picked up on my self-imposed abstinence and had made a game of it by flashing me, taunting me, and generally trying to break down my usually brittle self-control and having me fuck them whenever and wherever they could.
In stark contrast to my previous sex-laden adventures, I hadn’t actually slept with any of my girls since opening the four fresh slots. The reason for this was a fairly simple one, I supposed: I was ensnared and tangled up in indecision.
Which girls?
What kinds of spells did I want to create?
There were more things to consider now than simply who I fancied knocking boots with. Each fuck, each climax, held the possibility of making me a stronger and more versatile mage. Not to mention the fact that the female participant also had a chance of either upgrading an existing spell or learning a new one altogether.
What made my situation all the more difficult was that my father had divulged to me something interesting about my abilities. I could actually guide the type of spell my powers would create. How would I do this? By fucking the chosen woman in a particular way or in a particular place or, even, at a specific tempo.
That shit was crazy! I mean, sex, of all things, was meant to be one of those impulsive, animal exercises in which thinking could be cast aside.
I shook my head and forced my feet onward. Sex was always on my mind, but I had something more important, at least for the moment. I needed to find out the next step in Reginald Chaosbane’s grand design.
I crested the gentle slope and looked down at the ranch below. A voice hailed me. It was Damien Davis, my Fire Mage buddy and a Los Angeles native who had spent most of his life on the wrong side of the tracks. He was slogging his way up the slope followed by Enwyn Emberskull, who was managing the incline a little more easily. Damien was battling a five-day hangover, which would strip most men of their usual fitness.
Enwyn and Damien were Fire Mages, and the snow under their feet wasn’t just compressing, but also melting in their wake.
“Damien!” I said jovially, slapping my friend on the shoulder as he reached the top of the slope and stood panting with his hands on his knees. “You’re looking like a particularly messy sack full of assholes today.”
Damien took a deep breath. “And you might be as pretty as a pumpkin, but you’ve only got half the wits of one.”
I laughed at that.
“What’s up?” I asked. “Were you two looking for me?”
Enwyn, looking as sexy and put together as usual, had been rolling her eyes at the two of us bantering. She took off her spectacles and polished them. She even managed to do that in a way that stirred my blood, looking almost like a secretary out of one of those cheesy porno films.
“Reginald is addressing the gathered men and women who have heeded his call and flocked here,” she told me succinctly, replacing her spectacles on her dainty nose.
“I was just looking for him,” I said. “Wanted to know the next step in this grand plan of his—if there is a grand plan.”
Enwyn held out her hand. “Come with me, and I’ll take you to him. You’ll have your questions answered while he is addressing everyone else.”
We found Reginald Chaosbane, famous wastrel and phenomenally powerful Chaos Mage, standing on top of the roof of the ranch house’s front porch. Damien, Enwyn, and I climbed up into the branches of a nearby pine tree and sat on one of its limbs. From this vantage point, we could easily see over the heads of the large gathering of mages pooled around the porch. The rest of the Chaosbane clan were sitting on the porch, looking out over the crowd. I caught eyes with Leah, and she blew me a kiss.
There was no open window behind Reginald Chaosbane. No tracks in the snow that lay across the roof like a crisp white blanket. It looked like he had just dropped from the sky and landed there. Or popped out of the ether.
Despite knowing the Headmaster for about as long I had been mixed up in this crazy and fantastic world, ever since Enwyn had brought me through the door that led from the ruin of my uncle’s bookshop into a world in which magic was real, he was still an enigma.
I felt like most people only ever got to see what lay on the surface of the man. He was, more than likely, completely insane. But if he was mad, it was a madness of such rarity that he was simply approaching extreme genius from another direction.
Today, he was dressed in a flamboyant velvet frock coat, tarnished boots, and sporting his usual effortlessly immaculate facial hair. Reginald Chaosbane cut a figure that was somewhere between vagabond and viscount, gypsy and general. Just as he approached genius from an unconventional way, so he somehow looked ridiculously stylish by simply acting like he had no style whatsoever.
“Good morning, mates,” he called from his elevated perch, wobbling gently at the edge of the roof, “and thank you all for coming when I sent out my sweet siren song.”
“I’ve heard you singing in a bar, Reggie!” yelled an aquamarine-skinned woman with damp black hair and piercing blue eyes. I thought she might actually be a Siren. “And you can take it from me that you ain’t possessed of the voice of no Siren!”
There was some laughter from the crowd, but most of the faces were looking intently at the Headmaster.
“Quite, quite,” Reginald said, waving his hands around his head and showing off some lace cuffs that would have looked completely ridiculous on anyone else. “That as it may, I would still like to extend my humble gratitude to all of you who have come here.”
He trailed off and swept the crowd with those clever, liquid black eyes.
The atmosphere altered imperceptibly then. It was subtle, but the carnival air that was usually synonymous with one of Reginald Chaosbane’s public addresses was conspicuously absent. It reminded me of attending a sporting match, when the team you support is about to hit a buzzer-beater or score a touchdown, and you and the thousands upon thousands of your fellow fans all draw in your breath at the same time—an involuntary and irresistible herd response to an external stimulus.
It was like that then, as the Headmaster surveyed us all. Everyone’s attention sharpened, dialing in on the man’s face, on his lips. Waiting for the words that might very well dictate all our futures.
I had been expecting some of Reginald’s usually flowery and elaborate rhetoric, so I was taken aback by the bluntness of his address now. Enwyn stiffened at my side and moved a little closer to me on the branch. Damien’s face, as I glanced sideways at him where he sat on my other side, was a mask of concentration.
“It is time for action,” the Headmaster said. “It is time for everyone, for all of us, I mean, mates, to go to a place where we can hide out, lay low, and gather our team for the war with the Arcane Council that will soon come to a head.”
The silence that followed this proclamation was of the ringing, could-hear-a-fly-fart variety. Nobody moved. Nobody so much as blinked.
“I know, I know,” Reginald continued with a wry smile, “many of you have heard me talking about this day for years. For all of you here, the stance, maybe,
that we took up all those years ago has become slightly less real with the passing of old father time. However, what happens next was always as inevitable as gravity. As inevitable as something that is thrown having to fall back to earth.”
“But where are we going to hold up, Chaosbane?” someone called from out of the crowd. “Where can we hope to evade the spies and assassins of the Arcane Council?”
“Yeah!” someone else yelled—a fairly feeble and cracked old voice. “We all know that the Arcane Council delight in black, underhanded work. They trick and they lie and deceive. They put a damn glamor on most of the population, for gods’ sake!”
Reginald Chaosbane raised his hands for quiet, and the irate voices died.
“I agree entirely,” he said. “There can be no depths to which these unwholesome fuckers will not sink! I know that better than most, being in the inner circle of Istrea and Zenidor when they fell. That is why I am telling you that we will be taking shelter in none other than the Stronghold of the Twin Spirits.”
There was a gasp, which cut through the crowd like a blowtorch through a block of butter. Every eye went in the direction of said gasp. Toward Mallory Entwistle.
“But… But I thought that had been lost, surely!” she said.
A dull murmur of disbelief had started up. People were looking wide-eyed from one to another. I saw though, that it was the sort of shock that was built on hope rather than despair.
“Not lost, no,” Reginald Chaosbane said, running a finger thoughtfully along his mustache and kicking a lump of snow off the edge of the roof. There was a squawk as Igor, who had stuck his head out at precisely the wrong moment, took the snow right in the face.
“No, it wasn’t lost,” the Headmaster mused aloud, his voice, though quiet, still audible in the silence. “It was just relocated to some place no one could find it.”
“Well, if no one could find it,” Igor said, spitting snow and wiping ice from the enormous mustache that adorned his upper lip, “how did you find it, cousin?”
“Ah, but who said I found it?” Reginald said. “I’ve just told you that it was hidden. Hidden from all, including me. I’ve been searching for this place, the only place that would provide our side with proper sanctuary, ever since the Void Wars ended.”
“Well, where the dickens is it, then?” Igor said.
There was a dull thwacking sound as Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock hit Igor with his stick and told him that if he kept being a pain in the ass he was going to up and cancel his birth certificate.
“I don't know where to find this place,” Reginald admitted, but strangely, he let loose one of his old grins, “but I know someone who does. I have a feeling that the Stronghold of the Twin Spirits lies somewhere between this world and the world of the dead, in the void between what exists and what doesn’t, but I cannot be sure until I have communicated with the one person who is bound to know: Istrea, the Twin Spirit.”
Suddenly, I saw where this was going and the part that I was going to have to play here. I had been too preoccupied with thinking which spells I should gain by fucking whom to even think about Istrea, the Twin Spirit.
My mother.
“You’re off your fucking head, Chaosbane!” said some astute nymph in the crowd.
“Yes, yes, indubitably, madam,” Reginald said, “but, sometimes, the only reasonable response to the thing that we call ‘the real world’ is to go a little nutty, don’t you think?”
The Headmaster’s eyes snapped up to where I was sitting on the tree limb with Damien and Enwyn.
“I assure you, good people,” he said, in a tone that was all hot molten steel and raw, chaotic magic, “that I will, within a few hours, have the location of the Stronghold of the Twin Spirits. And when I do, the real journey for us will begin. As of now, though, you can take on the very sexy and dashing title of renegades and rebels for yourself.”
The Headmaster spread his arms to encompass all those who stood before him. His coat flapped around him, his dark hair moving like a halo of shadows around his head and face.
“The motherfucker loves theatrics,” Damien said from my left, smiling to himself as he watched one of the greatest mages alive hold his audience spellbound.
“We are going to be labeled as insurgents and anarchists, terrorists and traitors, by those who currently hold the proletariat under their phony spell, but we all know that we are really liberators. We are at war with the Arcane Council, and with all those who would get in the way of us as we seek to achieve our simple goal: to safeguard Magic as we know it, and to save the very Multiverse itself.”
“Nothing like aiming small,” I muttered as the congregation of mages roared and stamped its approval.
Chapter 2
I sat on an uncomfortable stool near, but not too near, the forge of Rick’s magical fold-out smithy. The structure had been a gift to him from his father. I was engulfed by the lung-scorching heat, as I had been the first time that I had set foot in it. It was hot. Hot as a dragon’s heart. I looked over my shoulder, at the lazy snowflakes that fell outside the mouth of the smithy, and wished that I could run out there and make snow angels for the rest of the afternoon.
As Reginald had basked in the applause of his audience, I had slipped down from the tree and gone hunting for Rick. He was not hard to find. People who are built like a vending machine rarely are.
“Rick,” I had said to him. “Rick, it’s time.”
Rick hadn’t said anything. He had just nodded his great slab of a melon once and then led me away, around the back of the ranch house, where no one had been allowed to set up a tent under pain of pain, as promised by Aunt Ruth.
Once there, he pulled out the pocket-sized box, which was in fact a complex magical device that folded out into a fully operational magical forge.
It was an artisan metalworker’s wet dream—full of tongs, hammers, and other things that I couldn’t hope to recognize.
Now, I was sitting, absentmindedly rubbing at the key-shaped brand on my palm that had been an unforeseen souvenir of going through this process when I’d spoken with my dad.
I was brooding on what Mallory Entwistle had once told me—about how my father had cooked up an ever-so-slightly genocidal solution to solving the problem of Universal Magic dying and, apparently, how my mother had come up with a different solution that wasn’t so morally reprehensible.
I wondered what my mother would be like. What pearls of wisdom would she offer? Would she be able to tell me how Reginald Chaosbane could guide his rebel army somewhere safe?
While I was playing the party of Broody McBrooderson, Rick was busy prepping the forge and doing everything required to unlock the white crystal that was my mother’s white staff in disguise.
“Friend,” said the massive Earth Elemental in his subterranean voice, “are you ready to set the soul of your ancestor free?”
It was the same thing he had said to me the last time we had done this. Maybe saying the words was part of the ritual, or maybe Rick was just a man of limited imagination when it came to monologues during moments of extreme importance.
“I’m ready, big man,” I replied.
I handed him the bracelet in which were stored the souls of the three Blade Sisters I had killed during the last War Mage competition that had gone a little sideways and culminated in a few proper, non-regenerational fatalities, not to mention the unearthing of my mother’s crystal and some very strange coke (not that kind of coke, the coke used in forging).
The big Islander had a large crucible set up in one corner of his forge fire. In it was a molten metal that he had told me, last time, was silver with just a splash of platinum and a thimbleful of tungsten. The silver and platinum would, Rick assured me, give me sixty minutes to converse with my ancestor of choice—with Mom. The tungsten would enable me to access her and open the crystal staff.
Just as he had done on the first occasion, Rick dropped the bracelet containing the trapped souls into the crucible of liquid metal. Then,
he dipped two fingers into the scorching, flesh-meltingly hot metal after touching his grass and leather belt that was also his vector. When he put his two massive digits in the scalding metal, I winced, regardless of the fact that I had seen him do it before.
“Holy shit, that doesn’t get any easier to watch, man,” I said.
Rick did not answer, being too engrossed in what he was doing. Sweat was rolling down the great slabs of muscle that covered his naked torso. He muttered a few indecipherable words, there was a resounding crack from inside the crucible, and the liquid alloy in the crucible burped up three large bubbles of gas and took on a coppery color.
Rick dipped his metal-covered fingers in a bucket of water by his side. The water spat and steamed. When Rick pulled his sausage-like fingers out, the metal covering them had solidified. With a flex of his hand, the metal cracked off and fell tinkling to the floor of the smithy.
Rick picked up the crucible and poured it into an intricate little mold, in the shape of a key, that he had sitting ready.
For my part, having learned my lesson from last time, I pulled on a thick leather glove that I had resting on my lap.
Once he had poured the last drop of liquid metal into the cast, Rick murmured another unintelligible incantation over the mold, instantly solidifying it. He popped out the key from the mold and dunked it in the bucket of water by his foot. I was expecting it this time and had a glove at the ready, he handed the key easily to me.
The crystal was already out on my lap, plain and beautiful and warm. Even as I held the smoking key in my fingers, looking for where I might slot the thing, the crystal glowed with a sudden intense brilliance.
Rick stumbled back, shielding his eyes, and knocked the bucket of water across the floor. Since I had a crystal on my lap, a blistering hot piece of metal in my clumsy, gloved fingers, and was sitting quite close to a forge fire should I fall into it, I elected to remain still.