by King, Dante
“Looks like we’re just in time, sir,” Barry said to me. He was peering down on the scene from over my shoulder, doing his best to blend in with the landscape.
Poltergeists were still outlaws according to the Arcane Council—Barry himself was still technically a fugitive from the Eldritch Prison. Sat as we were on top of a bright, snow-white hill, clad mostly in dark clothing and with a couple of glowing green poltergeists in our midst, we were currently about as inconspicuous as a turd in a fruit bowl.
“That may be, Barry,” I said, “but just in time for what? That’s the fucking question.”
“It doesn’t look as if these jokers are here in considerable force yet,” Nigel mused, his sharp eyes flicking back and forth behind his spectacles. “Looks like they haven’t quite decided whether or not they’re going to move in to arrest anyone as of yet. They still must not be sure whether the Chaosbanes have actually done anything wrong.”
“Just like Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock was telling me,” I muttered. “The Arcane Council couldn’t know for sure whether the Chaosbane clan are up to anything shady, even with all these people on their land, and even if they were spying on them. The family is just too weird and too unpredictable. This could be some organized orgy for all the law might know.”
There must have been about a dozen of these robed figures, bundled up in good gloves and good boots and furred hats against the cold, which was getting colder as the sun sank toward the western horizon. They were marching around and accosting many of the campers, leaning over them where they sat around their campfires. I couldn’t hear what they were saying from where we were, but it was obviously a clear case of the stern presence of the law making itself known and wanting to know why all these people were gathered here.
Now and again, one of the more belligerent or fiery-tempered campers would get to his or her feet and jab a finger at whatever Arcane Council representative was questioning them. The sounds of raised voices, though the words were indistinguishable, floated through the still chill air.
I had a feeling in my gut that it wouldn’t be long before—
There was a clatter and bang that echoed out over the beautiful, frigid picturesque landscape as the door to the main ranch house burst open and Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock Chaosbane stumped out onto the porch.
“Right!” he roared in a voice of phlegm-coated gravel. “I’ve had just enough of you Council bastards sticking your snouts around my property. There’s nothing that concerns you going on here, so be off with you!”
One of the robed figures nearest the ranch house strode purposefully toward the porch. Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock stood at the top of the steps and waited for him. He might have been a squat old boy, cutting an almost perfectly square figure, but he radiated the unmistakable malevolence of a landowner who had caught someone taking a shit in his field.
The Arcane Council civil servant reached into his robes and pulled out a scroll. He brandished it in front of him with the self-important and smug air of a dude who holds all the cards. I could see that his head was moving as he talked, no doubt giving Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock the Avalonian equivalent of ‘Yes, in fact we do have a search warrant, sir.’
Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock waited until the Arcane Council henchman was halfway up the broad steps that led up to the porch, gesturing commandingly at the old man, before he raised his walking stick and leveled it at the man’s chest.
There was a sound like an E-11 blaster rifle being fired through a megaphone, and the Arcane Council goon was hurled backward. He spun through the air like a Catherine wheel, wreathed in popping pink sparks, and plowed a furrow through the snow when he landed.
“Oh, shit, there it is,” Damien said succinctly.
As if on cue, spells erupted in all directions. It looked like both the renegade campers, those who supported my parents and the Chaosbanes, and the Arcane Council goombahs had just been waiting for a reason to throw down. Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock, in true Chaosbane style, had been the match that lit the fuse.
“Let’s get down there!” I yelled. “We need to figure out what the fuck the plan is now.”
“But sir,” Barry said, “those Arcane Council dogs will have backup not too far away. Ye can bet your bunghole they will.”
“That’s exactly why we need to figure out what Chaosbane has planned next,” I said.
The six of us made our way down the hill, Rick tripping in a rabbit hole and rolling the last twenty yards like a giant snowball.
Vector-fire was thick in the air, spells splashing and crashing all around. I slid behind a wooden water trough as an attractive Elven official pointed her hand at me. The bracelet around her wrist glowed, and a spiraling vortex of blue and white light hit the trough turning it into a giant ice cube.
Damien let loose with his Fire Vortex spell in response, a stream of roaring orange flame erupting from his hands. The Elven woman, who was clearly a Frost Mage, erected an icy scutum shield, one similar to that used by the Romans, just in time. She was punched backward by the force of the Fire spell, though, and she crashed through a tent.
Not waiting for her to retaliate, I hopped up and sprinted for the ranch house, the others close on my six.
Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock was still holding forth on the porch, wielding his walking stick vector like a stereotypical crazy old coot with a double-barreled shotgun. Chaos Magic boomed from the end of it, spraying across the front yard in scintillating sprays of silver and black and white projectiles.
All the while, as answering spells chewed the porch around him to splinters and ricocheted off the hastily erected shields that Aunt Ruth conjured around him, the patriarch of the Chaosbane clan laughed like a maniac. He pointed his walking stick at a tree that one of the Arcane Council was hiding behind. The pine sprang to life and swung a heavy limb at the mage and sent him flying into the frozen over duck pond.
It wasn’t going all the way of the rebels though. I saw at least four Chaosbane supporters lying senseless or bound in thaumaturgical bonds as we darted through the battle zone.
“Barry,” I said, “how long is it going to take you to put together these ships that the Headmaster sent you to go and get the schematics for.”
Barry puffed out the withered flaps that passed for his cheeks. “Bugger me, sir, I should say no longer than… four seconds.”
I felt my eyebrows head north and barely registered the Fire spell that hit a fencepost nearby and reduced it to ash.
“Only that long?” I asked.
“Aye, sir,” the poltergeist told me seriously, “but I dare say that I could get it down to three seconds for sure if we were really pushed.”
“Well, that’s something,” I said.
Thanks to Hollywood and books, I had imagined that we would form a defensive perimeter while Barry and Buttuck built the spectral ships. In my head, it was going to be a very testing and trying time.
So, this was good news from Barry. It was nice to know that sometimes surprises would actually work in our favor.
We made our way carefully around the side of the ranch.
Everyone involved in the magical melee was more interested in incapacitating their opposition than killing them outright. I supposed the Arcane Council wanted to take prisoners alive so that they could question them and find out exactly what the hell this gathering was all about, while the renegade fighters didn’t want to clearly show their hand by actually killing someone from the Council.
Rick cleared the final stretch of lawn of Council henchmen with a nicely executed Earth Surge, which sent a rolling ripple of soil, rock, and grass outward and flung two female Arcane Council goons into the log wall of the ranch house and knocked them out cold.
Happily, on making it to the back of the massive log mansion, we found Reginald Chaosbane himself, along with Mort, Igor, and a handful of other rebels.
Reginald was lolling on the low stone wall of a raised flowerbed that contained a selection of leafless fruit trees. H
e had his flying goggles strapped to his head once more and was wrapped in a large sheepskin coat, which made him look like the dashing parody of a World War II fighter pilot.
“Ahoy there, mateys!” he called merrily, casually deflecting a wayward spell with a gesture of his long-fingered hand and sending it back at a centaur who had stuck his human torso around the corner of the ranch house. The spell struck the burly creature in the chest, and he shuddered and juddered and let out a few high-pitched squeaks like someone who had unexpectedly found their meat truffles connected to a running car battery.
“Ahoy there, your Headmastership,” Barry said in return.
Reginald Chaosbane looked around, in the manner of someone who had just that minute realized he was lounging in the middle of a pitched battle.
“Hm, I don’t think much of this,” he said, a slight frown on his face.
“Me neither!” Igor agreed. One end of his wild mustache was smoldering gently, and he was missing an eyebrow.
“That pussbroom of yours is on fire, Igor,” Damien said helpfully, conjuring a Fireball and lobbing it at a Council administrator who was taking cover behind a snowman. The snowman melted, and the Arcane Council member dived back around the side of the ranch house.
Igor’s eyes crossed as he examined his slowly burning mustache. “So it is,” he said. He extracted a tightly rolled cigarillo and held the end to his mo, lit it, and puffed it into life.
“Yes, I think it’s worth us—what’s the air-pirate phrase I’m looking for, Barry?” Reginald said.
“Weigh anchor, sir?” Barry supplied.
“That’s my man,” Reginald said. “You get these ships ready, and I’ll call our people to man the lifeboats and splice the mainbrace… or just get on board.”
“Aye, sir,” said Barry.
Reginald Chaosbane wrapped his own throat in his fingers, almost like he was trying to strangle himself. In a voice that was suddenly magnified a thousandfold, he said, “All those who are with me, who are set on joining the cause of the Twin Spirits, make your way to the ships! We weigh anchor, push off, and get the fuck out of here in two minutes!”
“How are people supposed to know where the ships are?” Nigel asked. “I can’t even see…”
He tailed off and looked over my shoulder. He took off his spectacles, polished them on his shirt, and replaced them on his nose.
“... any ships,” he finished.
I turned, crouching as a sudden spray of poisonous yellow mana needles scythed overhead, punching into the second story of the ranch house and making the windows run like molten sugar.
Barry had called forth the ships, just as easily as he said he would be able to.
I wasn’t sure what gear he had needed to retrieve from the dungeon of the frat house, or what the schematics contained that he had taken from the library, but they had done the job.
As a layman of all things nautical, the spectral ships looked to me almost exactly like the schooners that pirates back on Earth used in the 16th and 17th century, during the Golden Age of Piracy.
The ship nearest to me was a double-masted affair, with ghostly green sails that flapped in a nonexistent breeze. I had no idea what all the goddamn sails were called except for the mainsail and the foresail.
It was also floating in the air, something which I assumed hardly any pirate ships had done back on my world. A series of rope ladders hung down from its decks to the snowy, spell-scarred lawn. The whole vessel emitted the same ghostly glow that the poltergeists themselves let off, although not so intensely.
I reached out and touched one of the ropes, which hung a foot from my face. Despite the alchemical glow that it emitted, it felt like normal rope under my fingers. The whole massive craft looked more solid than either Buttuck or Barry, somehow. Though it was engulfed in a phantasmic aura, it looked to be crafted of real timber underneath.
I mentioned this to Barry, as renegade fighters began swarming up the rope ladders while their fellows covered them from the ground.
“Aye, sir,” Barry said, looking up at the ship, his gaping skull sockets nevertheless managing to convey a love and admiration for the huge floating hulks. “Aye, they’re solid enough to exist in this world, to carry and house mortals here, yet there’s more than enough of the eldritch in ‘em to ferry us all safely into the Spectral Realm.”
“How many of them are there in the, ah, fleet?” I asked.
“We’ve eight ships here, sir,” the poltergeist said. “More than enough to carry all those who need carrying.”
Janet, Alura, Cecilia, and Enwyn all dashed around the corner at that point, the ground at their feet being eaten up and melted to goo by a hail of dive-bombing magical birds.
I conjured a Flame Barrier over the top of the fleeing women as they ran for the ship nearest me. The dive-bombing birds to explode in splashes of orange and red plasma against the shield. When they had all expended themselves against the shield, I let fly with a succession of Blazing Bolts that ripped toward the Arcane Council thugs who had been chasing the girls as they retreated. The Blazing Bolts detonated like mortar rounds in front of the oncoming civil servants, propelling one shrieking through the air and forcing the others back around the corner.
“Aye,” Buttuck said, talking loudly over the explosions and screams and sizzling cracks that were getting closer and closer as the Arcane Council harried the rebels and closed in on the ships. “Aye, these are fine air-pirating craft, Mr. Mauler, sir. None better.”
“Good to know,” I said distractedly, aiming with my staff and firing a couple of Paralyzing Zaps at a dryad woman who had scaled the roof of the ranch house. My spell hit her in the leg, and she tumbled down the slick roof and crashed through an ornate greenhouse.
“Aye, fast as a curry through an old man in the air they are, they’re easy to maneuver and they enjoy a large capacity for guns and cannons,” Buttuck blathered on. “A narrower hull and even shallower draft mean we can easily hide in shallow cloud estuaries and escape our enemies if it comes to a chase.”
“Great,” I said, watching as the dryad I had just knocked from the roof staggered to her feet, aimed her cudgel vector at me, but was abruptly wrenched off her feet by a Venus flytrap the size of a giraffe that had apparently been residing in the greenhouse.
“The downside,” Buttuck continued, “was that it couldn’t hold as much booty or crew.”
Nigel took off into the air, firing eye-stinging blasts of wind at any enemy that showed themselves, and Rick began to climb ponderously up one of the rope ladders.
“And ye’ll nay find a better captain than Captain Chillgrave here,” Buttuck continued, jerking a thumb at Barry, while Bradley and Damien climbed nimbly up the rope ladders.
Only a few rebels were left on the ground now. The rest had scaled the ladders and taken ship and were now peppering spells down on the remaining Arcane Council henchmen and women.
“Now, this here situations reminds me o’ a time when—” Buttuck started up, but the bounty hunting Chaosbane, Mort cut across him.
“I’m not sure if now is the time for anecdotes,” Mort said amiably to the poltergeist as he sent a fizzling burst of Chaos Magic toward a pair of Council members hot on the tail of a young, purple haired djinn woman sprinting for one of the far spectral schooners. Mort’s spell lanced into the snow around the pair of men. The snow rose up and crashed down on them like a miniature tidal wave, sending them rolling away and out of sight.
“Mort’s right,” Igor said, smoke curling out of his nostrils as he pointed at a nearby statue that I assumed he thought was Mort. “I was always under the impression that dead men tell no tales, Buttuck. So let’s stop it with your lip-swinging and get the fuck out of here!”
Igor, Mort, and I raced up the ladders that were slowly inching upward as the spectral ship began to ascend slowly into the air.
Barry and Buttuck, who were not encumbered by such mundane things as physics, zoomed up to the quarterdeck.
“Where are the others?” I asked Enwyn. “Odette, Madame Xel, Mallory, Leah?”
“They’re safe on the other ships.”
“Great,” I said with a sigh.
Chapter 6
Life in Avalonia had thrown a lot my way. I had experienced a lot of crazy-ass shit that I hadn’t so much as dreamed about back on Earth, let alone thought that I’d ever live through. Even after all the nutty escapades that me and my friends had been on, I couldn’t stop a smile of childlike delight at standing on the actual deck of an actual flying pirate ship.
I mean, come on!
The fleet of floating pirate ships rose into the late evening air, like eight gigantic luminous insects. An otherworldly wind puffed out the sails. Echoing booms and creaks came to my ears as the sails filled and strained at the ropes that held them to the wraithlike masts.
Now that Barry was on board and at the helm of the head ship, all eight spectral ships rose faster.
“Is he controlling the whole fleet?” I asked.
“It would appear so, yes,” Reginald Chaosbane said, coming to stand next to me at the rail.
The Headmaster and I looked down at the Chaosbane Ranch, which was getting slowly smaller and smaller. A lot of figures were running to and fro, robed and official. A few spells zipped and crackled up toward us, but it appeared that the ships had inbuilt anti-mana shields, or some such defense system, because the spells burst apart when they were about ten yards from the hulls.
“I’m sorry about your pad, sir,” I said as I watched a bunch of mages blast the door in and storm the house.
There was a gruff snort from behind the Headmaster and I, the sort of sound a hog might make while trying to clear its throat of a particularly stubborn bit of pumpkin.
“Bah, damned Council scum!” Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock snarled, hobbling up on his walking stick to stand beside us and peer down at the mages entering his house. “It’s not the first time that the establishment has bust their way onto the Chaosbane Ranch.”
“Nor, I imagine, will it be the last,” Aunt Ruth said, gliding up to stand on my other side. The milfy matriarch of the Chaosbane clan, clad in her usual collection of skirts and with her hair curled and piled on her head, pressed in close beside me. She had an ermine shawl clasped around her elegant shoulders, but it did not quite cover the luscious buxom tits that threatened to spill out of the top of her dress.