by King, Dante
As I was foremost in our group, he and I got to share a joint moment of shocked surprise.
I recovered first.
I reached out and touched the guy on his stubbled face and released my Leech spell. It was a degenerative little bit of sorcery that stripped a single enemy of their strength and invested it into the caster.
The Arcane Knight, big and tough as he looked, went instantly pale and fell forward. His knees buckled, but not only his knees. Every joint in him seemed to just collapse. I just had enough time to step out of the way as about two-hundred and eighty pounds of armored knight fell past me. At the same time, I felt a sudden surge in my energy levels—a rush of pure vigor, like I’d just ingested four energy drinks.
I braced myself for the sound of a truckload of cymbals being tossed onto a patio behind me, but no sound came.
I twisted and saw that Rick had caught the falling Arcane Knight by the collar of his tabard and was staining to keep him from falling over.
“The flowerbed, man, the flowerbed!” Damien hissed in Rick’s ear.
With an almighty heave, the Earth Mage pulled the Arcane Knight upright and dumped him into a nearby planter and out of sight of any casual eyes.
Peering down, I saw that the man looked very green around the gills. His arm trembled, as if he would very much like to point a finger at me but was incapable. With a soft sigh, his eyes rolled up and he passed the fuck out.
“Nighty night, Sir Spanksalot,” Damien said quietly as we passed by.
Thankfully, because the library was one of, if not the key room in all of the Academy, it was located on the main floor, not too far from where we had entered.
Barry was on point, and he moved cautiously with a silence that only one without a physical body can achieve.
We came across a couple more Arcane Knights, but we were able to hear them clanking along well before we actually came in sight of them. On the two occasions that avoiding them by ducking into an empty classroom or behind some convenient hiding place was impossible, we dealt with them in a manner that would have made Solid Snake proud.
The first guard was taken out by Barry drifting casually out in front of him, effectively distracting the elf and turning his back from where the real danger lay. That real danger was Rick, covered in his Rock Skin spell, and wielding no other weapon than his massive ham-sized, rocky fist. One blow on the top of the melon was all that it took to switch the guard’s lights out. He keeled over backward, and Damien and I towed him into a nice dark corner to have a snooze.
The second Arcane Knight, a feisty dark elf with a drawn sword in her hand and a mean-ass demeanor, came around a corner to find me slumped against a wall someway down the corridor.
“Hey, what the hell are you doing down there?” she hissed, in an accent that was almost a parody of a Russian villain in a Bond movie.
I burbled something and lolled my head around on my neck for good measure.
The woman was no idiot—she proceeded down the hallway with her sword at the ready, her eyes flicking this way and that as she approached me. She stepped through the open doorway, her blade at the ready.
And that was when Nigel hit her with a silent blast of wind that sent her reeling into the shadowy corner of the hall. At the same time, I used my Telekinesis spell to hit the woman in the back of her head with enough force to knock her out but not enough to kill her, and she slid down the wall.
Not bad work, all in all. Especially not when you considered that our usual MO was to walk into a place and start blowing shit up.
The library, like the rest of the Academy, was eerily deserted. The mammoth bookshelves stood around us, spreading out from the central reading area like twelve spokes in a giant wheel.
“Sir, if you’ll follow me,” Barry said.
I shook my head and grabbed a hold of Nigel’s arm so that he wouldn’t be tempted to wander off for a quick browse.
“Barry, all of us don’t need to tag along with you,” I said. “We’re not the fucking Famous Five. Hurry up and get it and then let’s make like Tom and cruise—I mean, let’s just get out of here, okay?”
Barry nodded and disappeared through the nearest shelf.
We waited for an interminable time. All I could think of was whether we had knocked all our guards out well enough, and whether or not one of their Arcane Council buddies might stumble across them soon.
Barry reappeared with a smile.
“You have what you need?” I asked.
Barry patted his spectral pocket. “Aye, sir, that I do.”
I nodded my head toward the door. “Let’s boogie.”
We made it back outside without too much trouble. I wasn’t sure whether to be reassured by the lack of posted guards or not.
Surely, the Arcane Council, a government that had cast a spell over most of an entire populace to eradicate the memories of parents from their minds, were not stupid. They might be completely without morals, verging on being completely wacko and about as dastardly a bunch of bureaucrats as ever existed, but they weren’t fucking stupid.
The guards whom we had knocked out were still where we had left them, though, and had not been touched. Maybe the Council had posted only enough for an alarm to be raised if the Headmaster showed up at the Mazirian Academy, or maybe they really didn’t expect the man to.
Whatever the reason, we managed to get all the way out of the building and were affecting that not-quite-walk-not-quite-run technique that bank robbers and people who don’t want to look like they are hurrying to cross the road use, when we ran into a threesome of Arcane minions out by the pool.
They were not Arcane Knights. They were robed and looked to me more like administrators than anything else.
But they had daggers at their waists and their fingers crackled with mana.
Sometimes, you have to be cruel to be kind and, as much as I thought these Arcane Council jackasses might deserve it, I found that I didn’t want to see them dead. It didn’t feel right somehow.
So, to save them that fate, I channeled all the extra mana I had taken from the guard I had Leeched and hit the lead nymph with a Paralyzing Zap. The spell was of such intensity that I heard her shoulders pop from their sockets as she jerked in mid-air and then collapsed in a heap on the floor.
Barry shot toward the second mage —a brutish half-orc with black and red marbled skin —and engulfed his head in his ghostly body. The half-orc thrashed and jerked, his grimoire vector he had been clasping falling from his grip as he tried to get the poltergeist off of him.
Meanwhile, the third Arcane minion managed to fire off a burst of sizzling green light that ripped through the air toward Rick’s broad chest.
Damien, with the reflexes and aim of a man born and raised on the streets, deflected the enemy spell aside with a Fireball, causing it to zip past Rick’s cheek leaving a rough graze. The big man grunted but didn’t appear badly hurt.
Nigel hit the third guy with a burst of Sandstorm square in the face. The abrasive Wind Magic made the man stumble back, flapping at his face.
With a curt gesture and a snort like a bull, Rick made a very localized Rock Wall shoot up from the ground, right under the stumbling Arcane minion’s face. It hit the guy under the chin, and he backflipped. His teeth flew in all directions as he landed with a dull smack on the tiles.
Barry’s foe collapsed, unconscious, a moment later.
We ran.
Down the hill, through the hedges, vaulting a low ornamental wall that skirted the main drive of the Academy, and into the edge of the town.
We made it all the way to the base of the hill on the top of which sat the fraternity house, and my parents’ old home, and up it without incident. Rick was puffing at the back of the line, but I felt a sort of thrumming exhilaration in my chest. This was the stuff. This was what made life worth living. That feeling of defying the odds, of flying in the face of adversity. It was heady shit, and I loved it.
When we had jogged through the overgrow
n garden that fronted the fraternity house, we found our good pal and fifth frat bro, Bradley Flamewalker waiting for us.
Buttuck was floating at Bradley’s side. Felicity, the Changeling, in her saber-toothed cat form, was lying on the wreck of a sofa that Nigel had destroyed after a particularly raucous house party.
Felicity gave a growl of welcome, and her head came up as we popped into sight. Bradley clapped his hands and let out a long whoop of excitement and relief.
“Thank the gods, you made it,” he said.
I stepped toward the handsome aristocrat, with whom the rest of us had butted heads with so fiercely when we had first met. We clasped hands and slapped each other on the back.
“Good to see you, man,” I said with genuine warmth.
“Likewise, brother,” Bradley said. “How was your Yuletide?”
I puffed out my cheeks. “Eventful would be the word that I’d use.”
Bradley grinned and ran a hand through his perfectly coiffed hair. “I imagine that is probably somewhat of an understatement.”
I held my thumb and forefinger a fraction of an inch apart.
The rest of the boys greeted Bradley in the same manner as I had.
While these catch-ups were taking place, I wandered over to Buttuck and said, “The broomsticks are stowed?”
“Aye, Mr. Mauler, sir,” the poltergeist said.
“Excellent. And Bradley has made ready the Blade Sisters? He’s told Acer and Pravum that if they thought they were cooped up before, then they should be ready to get a little more… cozy?” It was hard not to fall into pirate speak with Buttuck.
“If you mean the buxom wenches who are stowed in the dungeon under lock and key, sir,” the sloppy spectral sky-pirate said, “then aye, sir, the good-looking gentleman has made them abreast of your plans.”
It might have been my imagination, but I thought that the poltergeist had leered a little when he had uttered the word ‘abreast’. I wouldn’t have blamed him. The Blade Sisters were sexy and lethal in equal measure.
“Good,” I said. “Then, I guess that means we can get Barry to work his magic and pack the old place up.”
“Aye, sir,” Buttuck said dutifully. “And then we’ll be off, sir?”
“That’s right. Can you conjure a portal here?”
The poltergeist considered this, while Barry, having overheard our conversation, began herding everyone away from the house so that he could start shrinking it.
“Aye, sir, I can conjure it here, sir,” Buttuck told me, “but it might take me a moment. I’ll get started now, with your permission, sir.”
“Get to it, Mr. Buttuck,” I said, in my best impersonation of Anthony Hopkins in The Bounty.
While the two poltergeists busied themselves with their respective tasks, I zoned in on the conversation between my recently reunited frat brothers.
“You quite like knocking people on the head, don’t you, Rick?” Nigel was saying to the big man at his side.
“People under the Arcane Council employ, friend?” Rick said in his slow, thoughtful voice. “Yes. Yes, I do.”
“You’re very good at it,” Nigel said kindly.
“Thank you, Nigel,” Rick said.
“Tell me, if you were offered a sack of gold, would you knock me on the head like you knocked that Arcane Knight on the head?” Nigel asked slyly.
“Friend,” Rick said solemnly, “if you showed me the money right now, you’d already be asleep.”
The rest of us laughed while Nigel did his best to look affronted.
“You’d hit me for money, Rick,” he said.
“Not for money. Money is what you carry around in your pocket and buy beer with, friend,” Rick countered. “But, for a sack of gold… POW, you’d be out for the count.”
Bradley slapped his thigh while Damien chuckled heartily and patted Nigel on his head.
“But do not worry, Nigel,” Rick continued, pulling the halfling into a one-armed hug, “I would use some of that gold to fix your head.”
Bradley howled with mirth. “Ah, man! I’ve - I’ve missed you guys.”
There was a dull squelching sound and then a crisp pop. Sunlight, no longer impeded by the giant edifice that was my frat house, beamed down on me. I turned and saw Barry pointing toward something on the grass near his floating feet.
I bent down and picked up my house with my fingers.
I snorted and shook my head, marveling at magic in general.
“Talk about a mobile home,” I muttered and stowed the house in the depths of the breast pocket of my jacket.
At the same moment, Buttuck called, “The portal is ready, gentlemen!”
He had summoned the portal on the very edge of the cliff on which the fraternity house had stood. This meant that, to step through the portal, one had to, essentially, step off the precipice.
“All right, boys,” I said. “Let’s not mess around. Everyone through.”
The lads caught my tone and moved to obey. I didn’t particularly like playing the part of the hardass or the voice of reason but, above all, I wanted to keep these friends of mine safe. The sooner we were out of here, the better.
Rick, Damien, Barry, Bradley, and Buttuck all passed through the veil, never hesitating as they stepped off the cliff and through the magical opening in the sky.
Nigel hesitated only a little as he approached the edge of the precipice—the last vestige of a fear of heights that the flying Wind Mage had basically conquered.
I grinned as he paused, taking the time to point at Felicity at his feet. The purple saber-toothed cat had shrunk down from the size of a Great Dane to a Jack Russel.
Nigel bent and scooped the Changeling up.
“See you in a second,” he said.
I slapped him on the back, and he stepped through the portal.
I looked behind me, at the place on which the fraternity house had sat. The garden and the pool and Bradley’s beloved vegetable patches were still there, but they looked strange without the gothic hulk of a house in which me and the boys had shared such epic times.
It was as I was looking at the destroyed sofa in the front garden, that the two Arcane Knights appeared over the crest of the hill and started pushing their way through the tangled undergrowth of the garden.
My fists bunched, and my staff appeared in my right hand with the speed of thought. I felt a knot form in my stomach, knowing what had to happen next.
“There he is!” the frontmost Knight yelled to his companion. “Let’s bloody get ‘im!”
His compatriot, a sinuous fellow with a solemn face, looked unsure.
“We were supposed to send for backup if we found them,” he said.
“It’s just one,” the first guy said. He was squat and must have been at least half dwarf, or maybe part gnoll. “We can bloody well take h—”
I hit them both with my Rain of Toads spell.
As a professional soldier, in the employ of Queen Hagatha, the ruler of Avalonia, I bet you came to think that you’d be ready for anything. Turned out though, that a rain of slimy, fat amphibians was not one of those things.
The toads smacked and bounced off the Knights’ polished armor, as good a distraction as there had possibly ever been ever. For a second, I didn’t think either of the mages knew that I had actually been responsible. They probably thought they had just been caught in a bit of peculiar weather. Just for a moment.
And a moment was all I needed.
I was the last man, and I had my friends to protect. For all our sakes, it was going to be best if where we had gone remained as much of a mystery as possible.
I boosted into the air, using my Flame Flight spell, and launched myself backward in a slow and graceful backflip. As I rotated through the air, I summoned a Lightning Skink out of the ether and, with a stab of my staff, sent the lithesome, sleek, neon bright Storm Magic creature streaking through the air like lightning.
There was no time for mercy. No wiggle room.
The
Lightning Skink, all slashing, glassy claws and snapping jaws, crashed into the two Arcane Knights like a thunderbolt of fury. The two luckless Arcane Knights were bowled over, sizzling little bolts of dancing lightning running over their armored bodies like bright blue strands of gossamer.
The way that the Lightning Skink attacked was akin to a really furious cat: swiping paws and needle-sharp claws, moving so fast that the Knights didn’t barely had a chance to tell which way was up before they were knocked over or spun on the spot. One got to his feet, while the Skink was busy trying to open his pal’s armor up like a starving tabby attacking a tin of tuna, and fumbled for the vector at his side. He stepped on a toad and went somersaulting ass over helmet.
The Lightning Skink and toads would keep those guys plenty busy and, I hoped, too embarrassed to tell their superiors about what had gone down.
With a grim smile of satisfaction, I dropped backward through the air and into the waiting portal on the cliff’s edge.
Chapter 5
I landed heavily, ankle-deep in fresh snow, and staggered. That was the thing about portals: you could be freefalling one minute and standing on solid ground the next. There was a metaphor in there somewhere, but I was in too much of a rush to pick it out just then.
Buttuck’s portal had taken us back to the Chaosbane Ranch. The two poltergeists, my four fraternity brothers, Felicity, and I were standing on top of the low hill that looked down onto the main ranch house. It was where Damien and Enwyn had caught up with me, just before Reginald Chaosbane had addressed the gathering of rebels. From here, I was afforded a fairly clear view of most of the ranch.
Enough of a view, at least, to see that we were not the only fresh arrivals.
“Are they… Are they more members of the Arcane Council, do you think?” Damien asked me, staring down at the numerous figures in official-looking robes milling around the campers on the ranch.
“They do have that finger-wagging, stick-up-the-ass look of professional government functionaries, don’t they?” I replied.