by Dante King
I didn’t have too much time to dwell on the specific outcome of a spell like that, or when I might use it in a battle, because at that moment, the door crashed open and the lads walked in—or strutted in, would be a more accurate description.
“You all look very well pleased with yourselves,” I said, unable to conceal my grin.
Nigel swaggered up to me and patted me consolingly on the arm. “We h-had an awesome t-t-t-time,” he said, stuttering in his residual excitement.
“I can’t believe you passed up a chance with a room full of nuns, man!” Damien said. “It was hectic! And you didn’t get any? That’s a crying shame! A crime—and I know what I’m talking about.”
“I did just see Madame Xel leaving before though…” Bradley said.
Nigel looked around at me. “No, you did not…” he said.
I put an arm around his shoulder and started leading him toward the door, which Sister Moll was holding open. “Let’s cruise back on our broomsticks, boys,” I said, “and while we fly, I shall tell you a tale.”
Sister Moll led us down to our waiting broomsticks. As we mounted, the nun said, “Now that we know you, you’re welcome to visit anytime, gentlemen.”
I looked around at the elated countenances of my friends.
“Oh, don’t you worry, Sister Moll,” I said. “We’ll be back.”
Chapter Fifteen
The last words in the exchange between Sister Moll and Madame Xel came to bear fruit over the next week or so: there certainly was no rest for the wicked, and I certainly came to ache in places that I never thought I could ache through lack of that rest. I dallied not with the sisters, but with my beautiful potions teacher.
Our clandestine ecclesiastical coupling behind the altar at the Nunnery of Pulchra Vanitati seemed to have fired up the succubus’s blood, taking it from a gentle simmer to a rolling boil. Throughout the entirety of the week that followed our excursion to the nunnery, Madame Xel would make it her business to ambush me at the Academy or while I was out running errands in Nevermoor. She would drag me into whatever dark corner she could find for some public sexy times. We fucked in all the usual covert places: broom cupboards, empty classrooms, hidden in the darkness under a staircase, in the library stacks, and so on.
A few times, when browsing aimlessly about Nevermoor or picking up groceries for the frat, I would be unceremoniously bundled into a deserted alleyway or public toilet by my agent, and she would have her wicked way with me. Really, with her skills at being able to stealthily abduct me without warning, she would have made a great assassin. As it was though, she turned my daily roamings into exciting strolls filled with tingling delight. I never knew when or where I might feel a hand on my crotch or a hiss in my ear and have that familiar lilting voice instruct me to meet her out the back of Longwhip’s Saddlery in four minutes.
In spite of the fact that Madame Xel and I were meeting each other in ever more dangerous and adventurous locations, I did not gain any other spells from her. But it didn’t stop me experimenting with every new sexual position that popped into my head.
Our erotic rendezvous weren’t totally all about the sex though. Afterward, before she or I slipped away, Madame Xel would give me brief updates on how her search for new sponsors was going. It seemed that business was slow in general. Few businesses, craftsmen, or merchants were willing to put their name to my face, without proof that I was more than just a lucky Earthling. It was slightly frustrating, but the fraternity still had the regeneration runes and the broomsticks that I had managed to secure for us.
When I wasn’t at the Academy or doing the wild thing with Madame Xel, I spent most of my time down in the dungeons with my fraternity brothers. We would studiously lock ourselves away in our dungeon and work on trying to gain some experience and get enough monster-killing practice under our belts to convince the Academy Inscribers that the boys were ready for fresh spells in their grimoires.
The practice was paying off—slowly but surely. Nigel and Damien had previously received notices in their spellbooks that they could apply for new spells. They had gone into the Academy and walked away from the meetings with new combat hexes. They both received spells that summoned creatures to aid them in battle. It might have been pure luck that both spells were of the summoning type or because those were the particular spells that the Inscribers were inscribing that day. Either way, my buddies had new critters to play with.
Nigel, the halfling Wind Mage, summoned a beautiful winged creature upon which he could fly; all neon feathers, graceful swan neck, and a toothless mouth that fired beams of light that dazzled and blinded opponents. The creature wasn’t massive, not the size of a dragon or anything like that, but then Nigel wasn’t the biggest guy in the world. He perched upon it like a stormtrooper on a speeder bike.
After he had taken it for a test flight, he used it to help Bradley and I mop up a small hoard of marsh faeries that were hell bent on peeling our skulls from our faces. Nigel dismounted with whoops of delight and insisted that we all go upstairs for a celebratory tournament of ale-pong. As things are prone to do in a fraternity house, the tournament quickly escalated into a best of three championship—during the course of which Damien and Bradley came home from the Academy—and then into a balls-to-the-wall uber-tourney.
It was just before lunch the following day when I awoke under the ale-pong table. My remaining brain cells seemed to have marched off to the wonderful realm of Hangovia and left the inside of my skull a vacant and vaguely pulsating wasteland. I peeled my face off the carpet and sniffed hopefully at the air.
Bacon, my stomach told me. You might yet be saved.
Bradley was in the kitchen, at his customary place in front of the enormous iron range.
“Morning,” he said.
“Only just, low-man,” I said.
“Breakfast?” Bradley asked.
“Oh yes, sir,” I said.
Bradley slid a plate over toward me. “The Flamewalker hangover special,” he said. “Half a pig’s worth of crispy bacon, spinach, mushed avocado, red onion, grated carrot, sharp cheddar cheese, and hummus seasoned with just a pinch of cacodemon pepper, all wrapped up in one of my homemade tortillas.”
My mouth was watering purely at the description. When I took a bite of the Flamewalker hangover special, the sickness that I had been feeling melted instantly away.
“Goddamn this is good, Bradley.” I took another bite and then said thickly, “How the hell did you get to be such a whizz in the kitchen? Isn’t your family all about grinding the faces of the poor, and proud of not being able to make a piece of toast and all that other good shit that the super-wealthy are known for?”
Bradley laughed so hard at that description that he almost dropped his frying pan. “Bloody hell, is that what you think of me?” he asked.
“Not you. Not anymore. But that seems to be how Arun Lightson and those jackasses he used to call friends come across, in my opinion.”
Bradley managed to regain his composure and then said, “Well, I’m not sure if any of the aristocratic families in Avalonia are quite that bad.” He paused, then carried on thoughtfully, “Although, I think that I might once have seen my mother fill the teapot with milk and then put tea in it…”
I laughed. “Seriously though, you love it in the kitchen, don’t you? Why are you at a War Mage Academy when you should have your bitch-ass in a kitchen—your own restaurant kitchen, I mean—blowing people’s minds with your culinary wizardry.”
Bradley looked at his burned and callused hands. He pointed a finger at the stove top, and the hob flame died. Definitely handy, being a Fire Mage who loves to cook.
“My parents—my family as a whole—would never bloody well let me pursue a career in food. They would say that it’s beneath me, but what they would actually mean is that it’s beneath them. Chefs are people that you employ. You don’t aspire to be one. To them it would be like me saying that I wanted to be a professional chauffeur, or like my sister putting h
er hand up to be trained as a lady’s maid.”
I mulled this over as I chewed through my delicious breakfast wrap. “Fucking first world problems, huh?” I said.
Bradley grunted.
“Hey,” I said, “I noticed I have this new class today. Did you see it?”
Bradley folded his own wrap and took a bite. “Yeah,” he said through a mouthful of spinach and bacon, “we’ve got the same one this afternoon; Battle Preparations.”
“Any idea what that’s going to involve?” I asked.
Bradley, his mouth full, made a negative sound. He swallowed. “Damien wants us to go down to the dungeon with him before we head over to the Academy though. He wants to try out that new spell he got inscribed.”
I popped the last bite of my breakfast wrap into my mouth. I felt as good as new now. Ready for a venture in the dungeon before class.
“I’ll go and get the others,” I told Bradley. “I’ll meet you down in the dungeons in fifteen.”
I was only able to gather Damien and Rick from their rooms upstairs. It seemed that Nigel had taken one of the broomsticks for a morning ride and wasn’t back yet. In the privacy of my head, I wondered if that cheeky little bastard had snuck off for a bit of worship at the nunnery. The novices were probably fasting again, but it seemed that the nuns took it in turns to fast, so there’d always be someone there, ready to worship with whatever penitents decided they needed to do some charitable act.
We gathered outside the dungeon—me, Bradley, Rick, and Damien—and prepared ourselves to go in. Damien looked like he was suffering a little bit from drinker’s remorse, but when I asked him whether he was still keen to try out his new spell, he nodded in the affirmative.
“Let’s just get in there, do our thing like we always do, and I’ll try and get a hang of this new spell,” he said. “I saw that we’ve got that new class this afternoon, and I want to make sure I’ve got every arrow available in my quiver.”
“All right then,” I said. “Let’s do this dance.”
Rick punted the door open, and we all trooped inside.
As per usual, the door was sucked closed behind us at the same time that a ragged tear appeared in the air. The four of us fanned out in a loose semi-circle, eyes on the hole that had opened, feet spread and balanced, ready to fight.
“Here we go,” Rick said in his bass voice.
There was a series of dull splats as four ten foot long worms fell to the floor of the dungeon. They were slimy and eyeless, with no discernible heads, and they stank like a rotten wookie with vaginal gingivitis.
Damien heaved, filled his cheeks with vomit and then, in a show of true courage, swallowed his own spew.
“Sweet Morgan Freeman, they fucking reek!” he said.
He wasn’t wrong.
“What are they?” Rick rumbled.
“I dunno, but I’d be willing to bet that, judging by that stinking luminous goo their excreting, they’re probably poisonous,” I said.
“I second that,” Bradley said. “Best not to touch. Let’s practice ranged attacks.”
Without waiting for further advice, I summoned up some Frost Shards—the Ice Magic attack that I had so recently learned from sleeping with Cecilia on our date—and let them fly at the nearest giant worm. Unsurprisingly, the worm didn’t leap aside or flatten or contort itself to avoid the shards of flying ice. The Frost Shards pierced its gelatinous body like hot needles through a slab of butter. Foul smelling fluid burst from the wounds, and the worm deflated, thrashing weakly as its lifeblood drained away, leaving a meager skin sitting in a puddle of green ooze.
Bradley looked at me quizzically. “That’s it?” he asked.
I was as taken aback as he was. We had spent so many hours down in the dungeon fighting for our lives against a plethora of fantastic beasts all nursing extreme grudges toward us. Finding these creatures that were apparently poisonous but otherwise completely pointless was somewhat of a surprise.
Rick peered at the dead worm’s empty, six-foot, translucent skin. “Looks like one of my used condoms,” he said.
That broke the confounded spell of confusion that had taken the four of us in its grip. We laughed.
“You fucking wish, Rick,” Damien said. He sniffed and spat to clear the taste of vomit from his mouth.
The remaining three worms swayed this way and that, looking for the foes that I was sure they could somehow scent.
“All right,” Damien said. “Clear some space and let me practice this new spell I’ve got, yeah?”
One of the worms started sliding ponderously in Bradley’s direction. With the look of a man who couldn’t quite help himself, the best cook in our fraternity house hit it with a Fireball that completely vaporized it on the spot.
“Dude!” Damien said.
“It was coming right for me!” Bradley replied.
Damien rolled his eyes. “Sure. And if it had reached you by next Wednesday, I would have called that good going.”
He knelt down in a position that reminded me of an Olympic sprinter waiting for the starting gun. Then, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened his eyes a couple of seconds later, they resembled nothing more than a couple of flaming coals. He raised his index fingers to his temples and pressed firmly, then he let out a snort and, when he did, smoke poured from his nostrils.
The next moment, sparks started organically appearing all around Damien. They coalesced and, in only a few heartbeats, a monstrous bull had spawned in front of the Fire Mage. It was black as shadow and wreathed in flames. Its eyes, nostrils, and mouth glowed with the same incandescent orange as the inside of a volcano. Shreds of darkness hung around its thick legs and tail like black mist. Its horns were so dark, they looked as if they were cut out of the fabric of the world.
“Cool,” Rick said, summing up his thoughts on this impressive bit of summoning as succinctly as only he could.
Damien vaulted onto the bull’s back and tried to turn it toward the two remaining worms, which had moved apart while Damien had been summoning the shadow bull. It looked like the new spell, as cool as it seemed, was one that Damien found rather taxing. The bull pranced sideways, snorting and shaking its head, as if it wasn’t quite confident in its master’s abilities.
One of the worms was edging its way closer to Rick. The big islander was keeping an eye on it and didn’t look perturbed in the least, but he called out to Damien anyway. “Friend, are you going to use that cow to kill these things or not?”
In answer, Damien managed to turn the bull so that it was facing the right way and then jabbed his heels into its flanks. With Damien on its back, the massive horned shadow bull charged forward, moving with the unstoppable momentum of a freight train. It caught the worm that wasn’t near Rick with its horns, spearing it on the tips of the formidable weapons. As the bull cantered across the dungeon with its prize, the worm, which was wriggling pathetically, spontaneously combusted, shriveled, and turned to ash.
The bull, snorting with bloodlust and glee, turned and charged straight at the other worm.
“Whoa, whoa!” Damien cried out, clutching at the muscular, shadowy shoulders of his ride. The bull paid about as much attention to Damien as it might have done a gnat. I watched as it descended on the last remaining worm, which Rick happened to be standing in front of.
“What the hell!” the Earth Elemental cried and dived to one side.
The bull’s horns missed him by an ant’s cock as it passed and skewered the last worm with pinpoint accuracy. With a bellow of delight, it tossed the dying worm high into the air.
“C’mon, friend!” Rick roared in annoyance. “Get a handle on your—”
The six-foot worm, thrashing in its death throes, landed on Rick’s shoulders and coiled about his neck like a mink scarf that had seen far better days.
Rick bellowed in pain, as the worm’s foul fluid spilled over his face and neck. His skin began to bubble and blister as he screamed. Rick Hammersmith was one of the toughest,
stoical motherfuckers that I had ever met, so the fact that the worm’s gooey blood was having that sort of profound effect on him made me realize that he must be in agony.
Before I had a chance to intervene, Damien’s new pet returned to finish the job that it had started. Obviously, the bull had seen the worm writhing and dancing on Rick and had ascertained that it was still very much alive. Once more ignoring Damien’s commands to stop, it smashed into both Rick and the worm at about forty miles per hour. One horn went through the worm, the other through Rick’s meaty shoulder.
“Oh, shit,” I heard Bradley say weakly as Rick was tossed into the air like a ragdoll. The force of the throw made the worm burst apart in midair like a giant pus-filled balloon. Rick somersaulted into the air, passed over Damien’s head, and landed with a dull thud behind the bull.
Rick raised his horribly blistered and partly melted face from the ground, propping himself on an elbow.
“Friends…” he croaked.
The bull lashed out with a piston-like leg and kicked Rick’s head with a flaming hoof. The kick would have flipped a car, and Rick was fired away and smashed into a far wall in a tangled—very dead—heap.
“Enough!” Damien bellowed. He struck the bull on the haunches in a series of intricate taps, and the great brutal creature dissipated into smoke and floated away, dropping Damien to the floor.
Bradley started walking over to where Rick lay.
“What’re you doing?” I asked him.
“Checking to see if he’s still alive,” Bradley said.
“Are you fucking nuts?” I said. “Alive? Of course he’s not fucking alive! How could he be alive? Damien’s farmyard friend fucked him more thoroughly than anyone has ever been fucked before, I imagine.”
As if to emphasize my point, Rick’s body faded away before it reappeared on the far side of the room within the circle of regeneration runes that Igor had carved into the floor.