Creation Mage 7

by King, Dante

  “Ye sound like you have something in mind already, matey,” she said.

  “Aye, I do at that,” said Barry. “The most important thing is to get myself shipshape again, and to do that, I’ll need a lot of death energy.”

  Captain Nutlee wagged her head sagely, but I had no idea what death energy referred to. I looked over at Enwyn, but she simply nodded back in Barry’s direction.

  “So, you’ll be thinking o’ finding a sunken wreck where all hands went down,” said Chopsticks Nutlee, “or else a—”

  “A crypt, aye,” cut in Barry, “or, better yet, crypts. Crypts have a great deal o’ death energy and a great deal o’ gold too.”

  Captain Dora ‘Chopsticks’ Nutlee’s piggy eyes were suddenly alight with avarice.

  “And once you have your fill of the death energy,” she said, “we split the gold fifty-fifty?”

  “Almost full marks for you, Nutlee,” Barry said. “Two out of three ain’t bad. When I get my fill of the death juice, we shall split the gold indeed, though it’ll be seventy-thirty in my favor.”

  “Sixty-forty,” Nutlee countered.

  “I must be getting soft in my extreme old age,” Barry said. “Done.”

  Captain Nutlee spat green phlegm into the palm of one flabby hand, but before she extended it, her face was lit from within by the flame of cunning. Her eyes narrowed once more, and she licked her pale lips again. She darted a glance at me and the girls and then looked back at Barry.

  “An idea has just leapt to mind, Captain Chillgrave,” she said.

  “Can you make it jump out of your mouth so that we can all hear it?” Barry said.

  I snorted. That was a good one.

  “Well,” said Nutlee, “Cupido Island, a place that I know you have heard of before of course, was once the place of many ritual sacrifices.”

  “Aye, mortals of all kinds were sacrificed to every god and his dog there,” Barry said slowly. “That’s the blasted Pirate Queen’s inner sanctum. Where she goes to worship, if I recall correctly.”

  “Aye, that ye do, that ye do,” Captain Nutlee said in a soft voice. “The Pirate Queen’s been doing mighty well since you last sailed these waters, Captain Chillgrave. She’s erected a castle there… a private castle where she can worship and conduct ceremonies in peace and solitude, so the tales say. This castle is literally made out of gold, Chillgrave, pure gold. Gold bars piled like bricks!”

  “And what are you suggesting?” I asked, pulling the pirate captain’s gaze to me. “That Captain Chillgrave here can take the death energy from this Cupido, and then the gold is still split sixty-forty?”

  “Aye,” Nutlee said, “but there’ll be a fuck load more of it to split, you see?”

  “I see,” Barry said.

  “All we have to do is get through the Queen’s Army, and kill the Queen,” Captain Nutlee said, leaning back nonchalantly against the rail. “And for one of your reputation, Capt’n Chillgrave, surely that wouldn’t be so very much of a stretch?”

  “Sounds simple enough,” Barry said, stroking his ratty mustache thoughtfully. The light of adventure was shining in his one eye.

  The two pirate captains began discussing schemes and policies. I detached myself and led the girls away. I had never been much for a plan guy. They usually only ended up surviving for the first fourteen seconds of any mission in Avalonia, so I wasn’t too phased about missing out on the strategy planning. If your definition of a plan was a loose string of essentially deficient observations and guesses, held together by gut-feelings, indecision, and luck, then I had been part of some fucking brilliant ones.

  Better to fly by the seat of your pants, I thought—that way you’re not pissed off when you’re well laid plan turns into a game of hide-and-go-fuck-yourself.

  “What do you ladies think?” I asked Janet, Alura, Cecilia, and Enwyn when we were standing at the bow and out of earshot of all the other crew members.

  “If I’m honest,” Janet said, “I’m not sure if I like the sound of being all, you know, piratey.”

  “This sounds kind of, you know, unethical, darling,” said the blonde-haired, blue-eyed vision that was Cecilia Chillgrave. “Killing a bunch of people to get gold, if that’s what it comes down to… I’m not sure that’s really our style.”

  I nodded and looked over at Barry and Captain Nutlee. They were snickering and cackling like a couple of mustache-twirling villains over by the rail, clearly in the throes of a treasure induced micro-orgasm.

  “I’ll think of something different, a way that we can do what’s needed without killing anyone that doesn’t have it coming,” I said. “But, right now, I don't want to break up the little lovefest that Barry and that fucking revolting specimen with the chopstick legs have got going on over there. Barry is a celebrity, but he’s weak.”

  Enwyn nodded gravely. “Right, and as soon as that glamor wears off, I’m willing to bet that old Captain Sticklegs over there will start thinking how she might garner a bit of fame for herself by rubbing Barry out of existence.”

  I nodded. “My thinking exactly. Best not to rock the boat right now.”

  Janet rolled her eyes and pinched me.

  “What?” I said, pretending to be clueless about that terrible pun I had just thrown out.

  “Well, if you ask me, I think this is a great idea,” Alura said unexpectedly. “I could see myself being a pirate, in some ways. It’d be like ruling a little floating kingdom. Something that I have been born and bred for.”

  She flashed me a smile and then looked shyly around her.

  It was then that I noticed that many of Captain Nutlee’s pirates were looking at Alura with interest. I thought for a second that they were eyeing her up in the generic way that creeps the universe over ogle attractive women—that perverted, sexual way that causes maximum discomfort. Then, though, I realized that they weren’t really looking at any of the other girls, and they were all stunning in their individual ways.

  “They’re just super into jewels and stuff,” Janet said in my ear, noticing where I was looking.

  Understanding dawned for me. “Shit, and Alura is literally a walking, talking gemstone the size of a person,” I whispered back.

  “Yep,” Janet affirmed.

  As if to demonstrate the point, one of the new seamen swaggered over. He was a lanky little dude, a half-imp I thought him to be. He had bright red skin, a short mohawk, and severely punchable face.

  I stepped in front of him before he could reach Alura.

  “Yargh, matey,” he said in a squeaky voice, “I was hopin’ to exchange pleasantries with that shiny lass yonder.”

  He pointed to Alura with his chin. I noticed that he had a little goatee adorning it.

  “No,” I said.

  “I mean her no harm, matey,” the half-imp said in a wheedling voice. “My intentions are quite honorable, I assure ye.”

  I sighed. “Well,” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder and turning him politely but irresistibly around, “I called my guy, and he said the market is really messed up right now. We got way too much demand and not enough supply so, needless to say, we are completely out of fuck.”

  The half-imp blinked at me. “What are ye talking about?” he asked, rubbing his two brain cells desperately together in the hope they might birth a third.

  “Come back say… next week,” I said, “and I should be able to give a fuck about your intentions then.”

  Chapter 8

  Throughout my life, I was always one of those people who were entranced and intimidated by the ocean in equal measure. I could appreciate the boundless beauty of it, and it never ceased to get me thinking when confronted by it, but it also, on some primal level, really tickled that fearful respect in me. It came from that unnamed blob of common sense sitting at the base of our spine. The blob warns us of things that might do us ill, the survival instinct that we must have always had in us ever since we were cavemen.

  I mentioned this healthy respect to Enwyn, Jane
t, Alura, and Cecilia as we sat in Barry’s captain’s cabin. We were enjoying a delicious meal whipped up by one of the rebels, who had been a cook and a spy in the kitchens of the Castle of Ascension.

  “You don’t look scared to me,” Alura said, daintily picking at a side of the delicious and incongruously named orctopus fish.

  “I’m not scared,” I said. “There’s nothing to be gained in this world by being scared. On the contrary, I'm as cool as a cucumber right now. As relaxed as anyone heading on a journey to steal the death energy and gold from under a Pirate Queen’s nose probably has the right to feel.”

  “Then what are you saying?” Janet asked. “You just feel uneasy out at sea?”

  “Better to say that I feel aware of a background marrow-level dread,” I said, and the others laughed.

  “I think I understand what you’re getting at, darling,” Cecilia said, crossing her silky legs and leaning back in her chair. “You can respect something and fear it on some level, but still be happy to deal with it if you have to.”

  “That’s right,” I agreed, through a mouthful of garlic-butter night clams. “That’s exactly it.”

  “I get the same sort of feeling, darling,” Cecilia said. “That intuition that the sea is, basically, a primordial nada, with bottomless depths that are inhabited by snaggle-toothed, blind-eyed things that love to rise toward you at the rate a feather falls while you’re taking a dip.”

  We all laughed again.

  “You paint such a comforting picture, babe,” Janet said, draining her wine. “I’ll think about that next time I’m floating on my inflatable pink flamingo.”

  “What’s an inflatable pink flamingo, darling?” Cecilia asked. “It sounds divine.”

  Janet snorted. “I’ll bring you back one from Earth one day, girl.”

  We were having a lovely evening. Despite all the talk of snaggle-toothed creatures and bottomless depths, I was finding our nocturnal sea voyage extremely restful just then. The seas were calm, and we were the beneficiaries, according to Captain Barry Chillgrave, of a fair and favorable wind.

  Just on the edge of hearing, I could make out the calls of people and the lilt of a mandolin up on the deck, where most of the crew were having their dinner. There had been lanterns hung from the beams and rigging and a large trestle table pulled out.

  The ship was moving up and down with even, gentle rocking motions. With the excellent meal that we were just finishing and the epic wine that Barry had stocked his ship with, I was feeling pretty damned content.

  I looked around at the four women surrounding me. They were laughing and joking and teasing one another, making wild guesses at what Cupido Island and the Pirate Queen’s golden castle was going to be like. They were all looking exceptionally lovely in the light of the many beeswax tapers magically fastened around the room. Their skins glowed with healthy vitality—except for Alura, of course, who glittered and shone like a freaking breathtaking animated ice sculpture.

  “What are you thinking about, Mr. Mauler?” Enwyn asked me softly, turning to look at me. Her blood red lips glistened in the ambient light, and her glasses flashed.

  “I was just mulling over how it is that we all came to be here,” I said. “How I came to be sitting here… the luckiest fucking guy that probably ever walked the face of this world, or any world come to think of it.”

  Enwyn smiled. “Yes,” she said as she watched Alura slap Janet good-naturedly on the thigh at some joke she had told. “Yes, we have all come a good, long way, and seen some extremely interesting things since I first laid eyes on you in your uncle’s occult bookshop.”

  I laughed at the memory—not that there was really too much to laugh about, in some ways. I had accidentally blown a guy up that day; smeared him across the walls and ceiling of my uncle’s bookstore like two-hundred pounds of maple ham spread.

  Still, it was funny to think how fresh I had been then. How instantly attracted I had been to the gorgeous Mazirian Induction Officer, Enwyn Emberskull… I had seen her shower and seen her body for the first time that day, and that had led to me sleeping with her for the first time on the night of the Choosing Ceremony, in my frat house.

  I found my eyes drifting around the table, recalling how each female War Mage there had caught my eye, how the connection between each of us had been forged.

  The petite, athletic, and fiery Janet had been the first mage I had ever met, although I had no idea of it at the time. We had chanced upon each other in the mosh pit of an Iron Maiden show. After a lot of flirting and even more bourbon, we had ended up doing the no-pants dance that night after the gig. I had awoken the next morning with the sort of hangover you could sell to the scientists at Johns Hopkins University to study and Janet had been gone. Little did I know, though, that she had left me with my first spell: Storm Bolt. I grinned, remembering how I had then seen her doing a keg-stand on my first day at the Academy.

  My eyes slid to the right.

  Cecilia Chillgrave, elven aristocrat, Frost Mage, hot-ass blonde, and the only cherry I had ever picked from the virginity tree. My memory took me back to going to the orc-infested temple, on the day we met the Gemstone Elements. She seemed like such a prim and proper lady then, aloof and cold. She definitely was that, but I had learned that she could get down and dirty too. Thinking about how I had taken her virginity in that frozen tower, overlooking the place that she called home all those months ago, sent a pleasant shiver down my spine.

  My gaze was drawn by the glimmer of Alura, Princess of the Gemstone Elementals, sitting next to Cecilia. That same ethereal sparkle had caught my gaze when I had first clapped eyes on her at the table of the Prophet King of the Gemstone people. The friendship and mutual respect that had sprung up between us while we had been guests in her father’s house had then led to me having her by my side at the Academy. By my side… under me… on top of me… We had ended up having sex in her sorority house’s dungeon. She had been the first non-human I had ever slept with.

  The combined memories of all the hot, steamy times that I had enjoyed with these women got my blood pumping. We had all fucked in myriad different places, oftentimes not just one-on-one but as part of threesomes and foursomes.

  I drained my wine and looked around the table. The conversation had fallen into a lull, and the eyes of the four women were all boring into mine, almost as if they could read the thoughts surfacing in that naughty little part of my brain that had an express line to my meat and beans.

  “What are you thinking about, babe?” Janet asked me.

  “I was thinking,” I said slowly, looking from one female mage to the next, “that I’m ready.”

  I only realized the truth of these words after I had spoken them. In speaking them, I had made my decision at the same time.

  “Ready for what?” Alura asked.

  “Ready for another spell,” I said. “Ready to make another spell. With you ladies. All of you. And I want it to be a goddamn masterpiece. I want it to be beautiful and lethal, just like you four smoking hot, dangerous women.”

  Alura, Janet, Enwyn, and Cecilia all exchanged excited looks.

  Janet, who was always the first to charge headlong into a challenge, snatched up a bottle of wine and stood up.

  “Barry’s sleeping quarters are in the back, through that door,” she said, indicating a stout oak door that led to the rear of the captain’s cabin. “As a poltergeist, I think sleep is one thing that he can go without.”

  I stood up, walked over to the door, and glanced back at the four stunning examples of female beauty.

  “Girls, we’re not going to be doing any sleeping either,” I said with a wry grin. “Not until we’ve earned it at any rate.” I kicked the door open, ushered the girls through, and then closed it behind me. There was a wooden bar standing in the corner, and I put this across the door with a reassuring thud.

  It was a pretty simple room, really, but comfortable all the same. There were a couple of seaman’s trunks against one wall, a tabl
e with a map and charts and other bits of parchment spread across it, and a fairly large bed, which I guessed was one of the perks of being the captain—no hammock.

  The whorled windowpanes looked out over the moonlit sea. The watery expanse rippled out behind us like silver and midnight blue cloth, the wake of the ship drifting ever outward like discarded lace. Then, something suddenly struck the window.

  “Fish!” I said, bemused.

  “Floating fish,” Enwyn said to me.

  “Don’t you mean flying fish?” I asked.

  “Fish can’t fly,” Enwyn snorted. “No, these are floating fish. The full moon acts as a beacon to them, and they float out of the depths to drink in its rays before sinking down again when dawn breaks.”

  Strangely, the soft tapping of the floating fish on the windows made the atmosphere perfectly cozy inside the cabin.

  I turned back from the fishy meteorological conditions and saw that the four women were eyeing me.

  “Hey,” I said, “you look like you know what happens next—don’t let me get in the way.”

  They were candid, bold, and good-looking women. They were assured in their own skins. They knew how impressive, how sexy they were, and they owned that knowledge.

  “You couldn’t stop us if you tried, Mr. Mauler,” Enwyn growled, her blue eyes shining like the darkest sapphires behind the lenses of her glasses. Slowly, she removed her spectacles and placed them delicately on the table holding all the maps and charts.

  I watched the quartet of beautiful War Mages all start to undress. Cecilia, taking the lead before Janet could assert herself this time, came up behind Enwyn and gently reached round and unzipped the biker-style leather suit that the Fire Mage habitually wore. She pulled down the zipper, exposing Enwyn’s perfect breasts. The slightly older woman shivered as the elf ran her fingers over her nipples.

  My cock stirred like an animal coming out of hibernation. I reached out and gently, but firmly, pulled Alura to me.

  “You know,” Alura said in a soft voice, her strange white and gold eyes half-lidded as she willed away her ethereal clothing and left herself standing stark naked in front of me, “all this talk of piracy has got me well and truly flustered.”