by Dante King
I shoved the chopping board in front of Arun. “Be a dear and chop these up, will you, buddy?” I said. “I’ll get on with peeling the musk slug.” I looked at Alura. “What in all that is holy is a musk slug?”
Alura grinned and extracted a singularly repulsive dead creature from out of the pile of ingredients before her. It looked like a blood sausage and gave off a scent that was, quite simply, as close to the smell of vagina as anything that I had ever smelled before. I exchanged a glance with Alura.
“What?” she asked.
I looked across at Arun and wafted the dead musk slug in his direction. His eyes widened, and a small disbelieving smile raised the corners of his mouth.
“He knows,” I said to Alura.
“What are you talking about?” Alura asked.
“Nothing,” I said. I put the slug on the table and began the rather unpleasant and fiddly business of peeling it from the ass up.
“So?” I said to Arun, as I did this. “What the fuck happened that made your family the least favorite flavor of the month? Sounds like you’re being treated as a pariah, the same way that my pal Bradley was treated.”
“It’s simple, really,” Arun said. He gave me a look that spoke of the dislike and distrust that he still obviously felt for me. “Qildro and I were the favorites, among our circle of friends and acquaintances, to win the Exhibition Matches. There was no doubt in the minds of any of our parents that we were going to romp home. I’d like to say that you were a known, but disregarded entity. Truth to tell though, you weren’t even considered as anything that even resembled a threat. No one from your world has ever made anything of themselves in the Exhibition Matches—Earthlings aren’t even given consideration, seeing as they usually grow up completely ignorant of magic.”
“Surely though, Cecilia would have garnered a bit of respect?” I asked, still valiantly trying to locate a flap of skin around the musk slug’s butthole that might enable me to start peeling the vile thing. “She’s a Chillgrave after all.”
Arun snorted with contempt. “That just goes to show how bloody ignorant you are,” he said, shaking his head. “The Chillgraves are an old and wealthy elven family, of course, but they’re looked at with derision by most of the other highborn families. They are in the Arcane Council due to lineage, not because they are well liked or well regarded. Trust me, if they could have been removed, they would have been. Their tainted blood runs long and deep. Barry Chillgrave is far from what you might call a reputable character.”
“Barry Chillgrave has been dead for hundreds of fucking years, hasn’t he?” I asked. “He’s a goddamn poltergeist.”
Arun shrugged. “Anyway, in a nutshell, the reason that my family and I were ostracized was because I convinced my father to start a book. Basically, we matched bets taken against us from other families and some of our closest friends. It was a bit of fun, really. Casual wagers, is all. There was really never any notion that anyone would call the bets in, you know. However, my father got a little carried away. He was so sure that Qildro and I were going to win that he extended the book further and further afield, taking bets from powerful families that weren’t really aware of just how much bigger favorites Qildro and I were. They were, however, very aware of the odds my father offered them.”
“So,” Alura said, leaning around me so that she could address Arun, “your father set a trap, but got caught in the loop of his own greed?”
Arun flushed. “I suppose you could say that, Princess, yes.”
“And, presumably,” Alura said, “you find yourself unable to pay your debts to these families?”
Arun gave her an affirming nod.
“Ah, I see,” Alura said. “If there is one thing that aristocratic families find distasteful beyond all others, it’s other families that are too poor to pay their debts.”
“Is that what’s known as poor form?” I asked.
“I believe so, yes,” Alura said.
“And the rest of Frat Do—the rest of your fraternity house, they’re part of families that your old man owes money to?”
Arun gave a small shrug. “Ike’s great uncle lost some money, I think, but mostly they simply jumped on the bandwagon.”
“You mean it became unfashionable to be friends with the Lightsons?” I asked. “That sounds very upper-class.”
Alura actually made a commiserating noise in the back of her throat. “I can understand. Friendships among reputable houses, they are more often than not based on politics than actual esteem or respect for one another.”
I nodded. It would be a stretch to say that my time working in my uncle’s book shop had prepared me for a life of courtly intrigue, sinister machinations, and the power struggles between great houses. There was, obviously, that couple of months where I read the A Song of Ice and Fire novels back to back behind the counter, but I doubted that really counted. Besides, if I was being honest, it was the sex scenes that kept me hooked.
I patted Arun on the shoulder. “Ah well, man, I’m sure there are plenty of worse things than not being on speaking terms with those guys.” I jerked my thumb at Ike, Qildro, and Dhor. “Who, if we’re being candid, are probably the sort of chaps who should have been told to run off and play in the traffic when they were younger.”
A ghost of a smile flitted across Arun’s face. “You might not be far from the mark with that statement, Mauler.”
“Although, if I’m being really candid, you probably should have been the one to lead them into traffic.”
Arun blinked a few times, then nodded. “I suppose I probably, perhaps, just might have, acted out of order.”
“Look,” I said, taking this whole bigger man thing to the next level, “if you’re out of favor with those shit-guns, you could hang out with me and the boys.”
Arun couldn’t disguise his surprise at these words. Or his skepticism. “What? After the hell that we’ve given one another in only a few short weeks? What’s the catch?”
Alura laughed softly next to me.
“No catch,” I said, looking at Lightson dead in the eye. “I’m not fucking around with you here. I think it’s safe to say that you and I have banged heads a few times. But, in that final exhibition match, I got the feeling that you might have a modicum of respect for what Cecilia and I managed to pull off.”
The wounds were obviously still fresh for Arun, but I noticed that, while he didn’t agree with me, he didn’t gainsay me either.
“All I’m saying,” I said, “is that, if you’re willing to forget all that dumb shit that we’ve done to each other, I might be able to talk the boys into letting you spend some of your down time at our frat.”
I could tell that this offer sounded pretty good to Arun. It wasn’t much of a surprise either, when I considered how lame it would be being treated like the caterpillar in a salad bowl that you had basically ruled only a few short weeks before.
“However, you’re going to have to do something that will convince my boys that you’re worth bringing into the fold,” I said. “I mean, it’d be all too easy for you to be full of shit right now. You’re going to have to prove that you’re to be trusted. That’s a pretty fair stipulation, yeah?”
The knife in Arun’s hand chopped with carefully timed precision along a thunder vine as he considered this. “You want me to do something for you?” he asked.
I’d managed to get a grip on the musk slug’s skin now and began to peel it slowly up its slimy body. “Man, I don’t really want you to do anything for me. I’m not really that bothered. I’m just thinking that, if you want to take me up on my offer, let bygones be bygones and all that, well, you’re going to need to bring something to the table. That’s all there is to it. You don’t want to be that guy who’s invited to the barbecue, turns up empty handed, and eats everyone else’s ribs and drinks their beer.”
Arun considered this a while longer, taking a few more fresh thunder vines from the pile on the desk.
Alura nudged me as the High Elf Holy M
age reflected on my words.
“Excellent barbecue analogy,” she whispered to me.
“Thanks,” I said. “I think it’s because I skipped breakfast this morning.”
After he’d finished portioning the thunder vines, Arun put the knife down and looked up at me. Despite the fact that I didn’t much like the guy, he obviously wasn’t a total imbecile. He had a brain in his head, that was certain, and right now he had a calculating look in his eye.
“All right,” he said, “I’m willing to concede that you may have a point.”
“How generous of you,” I said.
“I’m also willing to help you with something that I know you need help with. The procurement of a poltergeist.”
I ripped the musk slug’s skin clear of its body and passed it over to Alura. The Gemstone princess looked at the nude little creature with distaste, then carefully started to trim it into lengthwise strips.
“You know about our lack of poltergeist?” I asked.
“Of course,” Arun said airily. “It’s no secret is it? Everyone has been wondering how the bloody hell you are going to manage when push comes to shove in our training.”
“We’ll manage,” I said. I didn’t trust this guy nearly enough to divulge anything about the regeneration runes we’d just had installed. Let people wonder all they liked. “So, how would you go about helping us out on this issue?” I asked.
Arun lowered his voice. “I’ve got a cousin. He’s sort of the black sheep in our family—though now, of course, the Lightson family is somewhat a flock of black sheep. Anyway, this cousin of mine is a Death Mage. He’s the only one in the family that isn’t a Holy Mage. He runs with a fairly discourteous and ill-bred crowd—criminals and delinquents of various casts.”
I unstoppered a beaker of echidna blood and poured half of it into the cauldron in front of me. “And how can this Death Mage cousin of yours help us out?” I asked casually. I scanned the Transmogrification Potion method on the blackboard and saw that I needed to add the musk slug skin straight in after the echidna blood. I did so, then gave the mixture a good stir. The potion changed from brown to green.
“Well,” Arun said, dropping his voice still lower, “poltergeists are technically illegal entities in themselves, are they not? I think that my cousin is well placed to help you procure the freedom of one, if you’re interested?”
I looked over at the rest of my fraternity brothers. Rick was gazing in my direction. When he caught my eye, he gave me a somewhat perplexed look. I shot him a look that I hoped conveyed that I was doing something for the good of the frat, dropped a wink, then turned back to Arun.
“You’ve got my attention, Lightson,” I said. “Let me think about it. I’ll have to talk to the boys in any case and see what they reckon. I probably don’t need to tell you that they’re most likely going to be pretty fucking dubious about anything that comes out of your lips. Probably going to ask me whether there were any crumbs of bullshit clinging to the corners of your mouth after you finished talking.”
Arun smirked. “Yes, well, I’d probably be like that if our places were reversed.”
I gestured at the half-finished potion simmering away in front of us. “How about we put a cork in this convo for the time being. See if we can get through this lesson without metaphorically biting each other’s heads off. Then we can see whether or not we want to risk having our heads torn off for real by organizing a poltergeist break out.”
Arun gave me a cautious grin. “Deal,” he said.
As we turned back to our work, Alura reached across and gave my thigh a surreptitious squeeze. I looked up, eyebrows raised in a silent question.
“You continue to surprise, Mr. Mauler,” she said.
The rest of the lesson was spent ensuring that the Transmogrification Potion was up to snuff, as well as making some light, inoffensive small talk. The Transmogrification Potion was an interesting and potentially handy little brew. Once the base elixir had been mixed, you simply added a portion of the thing that you wanted to change into. Apparently, it was the potion of choice for spies, thieves, and assassins who wanted to disguise themselves. Madame Xel put the reversal spell on the board so that the partner who had not been turned into a toad or a raven could transform their work buddy back.
We divided the base potion into three flasks and added surprise ingredients into each one. Alura, thanks to a tuft of fur, was turned into a fox. I spent an enjoyable thirty seconds flapping about the classroom in the shape of a vampire bat—before Nigel, the cheeky bastard, hit me unexpectedly with the reversal spell and sent me crashing through Madame Xel’s desk. I joined in the laughter with the rest of the class. You had to give credit where it was due. My own self-control was sorely tested when Alura handed Arun his flask of potion and turned him into a cockroach. In my defense, I only considered squishing him for five seconds before hitting him with the reversal spell.
When the class ended, I was cautiously optimistic as to how things with Arun might progress. Rick, Bradley, Nigel, and Damien came gathering around my desk once Arun had left the room, but I waved them away and told them that I’d fill them in after I’d had my meeting with Madame Xel.
Bradley gave me a nudge in the ribs. “A meeting? I wonder if it’s business or pleasure?”
Alura eyed Madame Xel, where the succubus stood waiting for me at the front of the class. “I have to say,” the Gemstone Princess said, “I don’t think I’d turn down a pleasure meeting with that woman.”
The rest of the crew laughed and left, telling me that they would be lunching around the pool when my meeting was over.
“I’ll see you in a bit,” I said.
Once they were gone, I walked up to the front of the classroom. Madame Xel didn’t say a word, but beckoned me to follow her and led me through a door and into her office.
The room beyond the classroom was dimly lit, due to the gauze curtains drawn across most of the windows. Shelves covered the stone walls. These shelves were crammed to bursting with countless jars, beakers, and fluted glass vessels containing a host of weird and wacky things. Some held the classic array of slimy dead things, contorted behind warped glass. Other jars seemed to hold only light. Still other containers were filled with dried ingredients of all sorts, or held seemingly random objects.
There was a workbench that was home to the most beautiful and intricate assembly of glass equipment I had ever seen; a complex collection of beakers and tubes and pipettes that looked like the most expensive Hot Wheels track ever made.
However, it was the bed in the sunken center of the space that garnered most of my attention. It gave the whole room the bizarre appearance of a mad laboratory that moonlighted as a brothel. It was a bed fit for an empress, surrounded by candles on pedestals.
I pointed at the enormous bed with its shining satin covers and deep crimson hangings.
“Is that the succubi version of Frankenstein’s slab?” I asked.
“I do not know who this Frank Stein is, Mr. Mauler,” she said, “but I can tell you that that bed is where the real magic happens. Who knows, perhaps you and I will be able to get...experimental one day soon. After all, blending business with extreme pleasure is a succubus’s forte…”
Chapter Nine
Madame Xel indicated a long, low velvet couch that was in one corner of the eldritch laboratory-cum-sex dungeon and bade me sit down. I was having real trouble steering my thoughts away from all the wonderfully dirty things that the succubus and I could get up to in that room. I was suddenly viewing normally innocuous objects—like that couch for instance—in a whole new light. As I sat down on the soft velvet, I couldn’t help but think what a great height it would be to bend Madame Xel over.
“Now, Justin,” Madame Xel said, settling herself down next to me, “as you know, and as I have said to you before, I see great potential in you.” She licked her lips and ran her eyes over me. “Yes, indeed, a great deal of latent talent—in multiple areas.”
I grinned at
her. We both knew exactly what she was getting at with that comment. Personally, I was all too ready to dispense with the business part of this meeting and get straight down to the pleasure bit. There could be no doubt that a succubus like Madame Xel would have a host of bedroom-related tricks up her sleeve that I had probably never even heard of. My heartrate picked up at the thought of what might go down between us in this room.
However, it was probably a smart and prudent idea to sort out what the next step in my War Mage career was going to be too, so I leaned back on the comfortable couch and regarded the beautiful succubus with what I hoped was a diligent and interested expression on my face.
“I’m glad you think that I have the potential that is worth investing your time in,” I said.
“Mmmm, you do indeed,” Madame Xel said again. “And I am not the only one who thinks so.”
I raised my eyebrows inquisitively. “Are you talking about sponsors?” I asked.
“I am talking about sponsors, yes,” Madame Xel said. “As I told you at the Exhibition Matches, when I offered you my services, sponsors are a crucial component in becoming a successful War Mage. Without outside help and without the weapons and gear that the most lucrative and sought after sponsorships come with, you will find your ascent to the top of the War Mage pile fairly hard going.”
“I’ve done all right for myself so far,” I said.
“Undoubtedly. Your prowess is commendable. What you have to remember though is that if you do not gain a certain sponsor—say a manufacturer in light armor, or a blacksmith specializing in magical blades, or something like that—then they will find another to sponsor. Then you will be on the receiving end of that sponsorship deal—in the case of the magical blade maker, a rather pointy end, I imagine.”
“So you’re saying that it’s not just about reaping the benefits of sponsors yourself, there’s also an element of depriving your fellow War Mages from as much stuff as you can at the same time?” I asked.