by Dante King
The big islander sat up with a sudden gasp. His massive chest heaved a few times as he ran his hands over his face and neck, checking to make sure that he still didn’t look like a melted wax effigy of himself.
“You all right, big man?” I asked as I approached with Damien and Bradley behind.
Rick looked up, shooting a glance at Damien with his big green eyes that called him a moron far more effectively than mere words ever could. He hauled himself to his feet and let out a deep breath.
“Oh sure, friend,” he said sarcastically. “Never better.” He turned to look at Bradley. “You do me a favor tonight okay, friend,” he said as the four of us began to mosey over to the door. “You cook us up some nice big fat steaks. I feel like I need revenge on the bovine race.”
Chapter Sixteen
All was forgiven and Rick’s death had already turned into a humorous anecdote by the time we arrived at our Battle Preparations class.
“And then,” Bradley said to Nigel, pulling as grotesque a face as his naturally handsome features would allow, “he says, ‘Friend…’ and the bull dropkicks him right in the skull!”
Nigel chuckled and shook his head in disbelief. “I would dearly have liked to witness that!” he giggled.
“You guys, shhh!” Janet said, turning around from where she, Alura, and Cecilia sat on the bench below me and my frat bros. “Madame Odette is coming.”
The Battle Preparations class was gathered in the same outside arena in which we took our Physical Fitness Training classes. My fellow students and I, which included the three girls, my frat, Arun Lightson, and the three dudes that had previously been part of his little clique—Qildro, Ike, and Dhor—were sitting on the stone benches that ringed the sandy arena below. The ever-changing, ever-unpredictable obstacle course that played the main role in our Physical Fitness Training classes was absent today, however.
“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen,” said Madame Scaleblade—Odette, I reminded myself—as she walked out in front of the gathered class. ”And thank you, Miss Thunderstone, for trying to rein in those troublemakers at the back.”
“She’s not talking about us is she?” Nigel whispered.
“Now,” Odette said, “my class load is rather full at the moment, but I agreed to take on this particular class as I feel it is important for a woman to get out and about in the fresh air, no?”
“Odette?” Alura asked. “What exactly is this class about?”
“It is about being prepared for battle,” Odette replied simply and enigmatically.
“And what,” said a snide, soft and somehow slimy voice from the very front row, “makes you think that you, a dragonkin, are up to the task of teaching us? What are your credentials?”
The voice belonged to Qildro Feybreaker; dark elf summoner and general excrescence.
Odette regarded the young, sharp-featured elf through her heavily-lidded eyes. She toyed with one of the many necklaces that hung around her neck. Then she asked pleasantly, “And who are you, may I ask?”
“Qildro Feybreaker,” came Qildro’s smug reply.
“And your elemental affinities?” Odette asked.
“I can use Fire, Earth, and Ice,” the dark elf said, looking down his aquiline nose at Odette, who looked more like a gypsy than a teacher, it must be said.
“I see,” Odette said. Her face changed then. It lost some of the sleepy duskiness that made it so warm, and took on a colder, reptilian edge. “In that case, Qildro Feybreaker, stand up, step out into the arena with me, and allow me to use you as a prop in the first lesson I’m going to teach this class.”
With slightly less cockiness than he had started this exchange, Qildro followed Odette down to the sandy floor of the arena.
“And what exactly is this first lesson that you want to teach us?” Qildro asked, his voice quavering just a fraction, much to my enjoyment.
“That a War Mage should always be ready to back up strong, sure words and subtle barbs with quick and decisive action! Show me what you ’ave got!”
And with no more warning than that, Odette Scaleblade reached into one of her innumerable pockets and pulled forth a handful of dust. With a snarl, she cast it toward the momentarily frozen form of Qildro.
“Enchanted Ashes!” Nigel hissed from next to me, standing up on our bench so that he could get a better view of the combat that had just started below.
Qildro had finally realized that he was being challenged to a fight by Madame Scaleblade. With a series of quick, stabbing waves in the air, he summoned a large horse; three yards tall, gleaming gold hide, with a mane of white fire. Qildro jumped up on the beast, and it reared, hooves swiping angrily in Odette’s direction.
I figured Qildro was going to try and ride Odette down—an expedient way to end most arguments—but he didn’t get the chance. For, at that moment, the dust that Odette had thrown out toward him made the stretch of sand that separated them writhe and swirl. Next thing the class knew, a huge dragon made all of bone—the skeleton of a dragon—ripped itself out of the ground. The only skin that the creature had on its whole body, was the ragged, leathery hide that stretched between the pinions of its wings.
There was a collective gasp from the watching students.
“It’s gonna be hard for Qildro to get under that thing’s skin,” said some joker in the crowd.
Odette ran, with surprising agility for someone dressed in so many layers of skirts, up the bone dragon’s spine and sat between its shoulders blades. Then she called out in a suddenly terrible and powerful voice, “See ‘ow underestimating someone can get you into trouble, Mr. Feybreaker? Let us see ‘ow you cope with my little monsters, hm?”
The bone dragon launched itself into the air and began to rain pulsating green fire at Qildro, which hit the ground and detonated like mines going off. For his part, the dark elf remained atop his fiery mount as he galloped around the arena, desperately seeking to get away from his airborne aggressor.
“Lesson two, class,” Odette yelled from the dragon’s back, “is to never let up in battle. You throw everything at an opponent until they are beat. Until they are dead.”
With a thrust of her hand, Madame Scaleblade pointed her contorted fingers at the ground ahead of where Qildro’s summoned horse was running. Bone spikes, as long as lances, burst out of the ground. Two of them drove through the belly of the huge horse and stopped it dead in its tracks. Qildro was thrown over the neck of the beast and landed in a spray of sand some ten yards away. His horse kicked and screamed and then burst into a cloud of ash.
Madame Odette landed the bone dragon nearby while Qildro gasped like a landed fish on his back. He was completely winded.
“Lesson three, class,” the dragonkin said in her commanding voice as she dismounted and strode toward the helpless dark elf, “is that you do not gloat, you do not laugh, you do not fuck about when it comes to the dispatch of your enemy!” She raised her hand, and a huge bone spear materialized in her grasp. It was the sort of spear that would’ve made any caveman who wielded it the talk of the caves, and made any wooly mammoth that saw it piss itself with terror.
“You must be prepared to strike as suddenly, quickly, and as unfeelingly as winter!” Odette cried as she reached the terrified Qildro and put a foot on his chest, forcing him down..
“Wait—” Qildro tried to say.
Odette drove the spear hard into Qildro’s chest, punching in through his sternum with every ounce of force she had. Qildro let out a wet scream, blood pouring from his mouth. Odette gave the spear a sharp, crunching twist and then wrenched it free. Then, as Qildro’s eyes began to glaze, she whipped the blade of the spear across his neck and opened his throat.
“Whoa,” Damien said.
“That was fucking brutal,” said Janet.
“What a woman,” Cecilia and Alura said at the same time.
As Qildro’s body faded away into white light and reappeared in the regeneration station on the other side of the arena, Madame Scaleblade
walked across the sand toward us. The bone dragon was dissolving into pieces behind her.
“I think—I ‘ope—that I ’ave both demonstrated ’ow I am qualified to teach this class,” she said, “as well as taught you three crucial lessons as to why you need to be mentally, as well as physically, prepared to follow the path of the War Mage.”
There were a few nods, but most of the class were just staring at Odette in a sort of marveling respect. I was sure that a significant portion of the male cohort were employing the old tuck-the-boner-under-the-waistband trick.
Odette clapped her hands, regaining the class’s attention. “Now,” she said, her voice already falling back into its usual sleepy tone, “be so good as to divide into teams of three. You will spend the rest of the lesson sparring.”
And so we did. We spent the next two hours out on the sand, taking it in turns to fight our fellow classmates. My fraternity did very well as a whole. The boys demonstrated that, regardless of the fact that we were without a poltergeist, we were still managing to stay abreast of the other frats and sororities that did.
I managed to continue my streak of not dying, as did Nigel and Bradley who were on a team with some useless dunce of a dwarf. Rick and Damien were my teammates, and both of them died in a couple of the fights, but only due to excess cockiness rather than lack of ability.
However, watching the other teams battle and use their magical abilities, I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that, even though the boys and I hadn’t fallen behind, it might not be long before we did.
This was brought home to me when Alura, Cecilia, and Janet came and stood next to me, during a brief breather given us by Odette halfway through the training session.
“I must say, darling,” Cecilia said, “that I’m quite impressed with you. Well, perhaps not so much you; I already knew you were capable. It’s your fraternity brothers. I would have thought that they’d be getting their buttocks well and truly kicked here.”
“As did I,” Alura said. “Training must be… erratic without a poltergeist.”
“Yeah,” I admitted, “it’s not exactly what you’d call organized. You should have seen this morning’s enemies. It was like fighting a bunch of flaccid rubber cocks.”
The girls giggled and looked at one another at this. Janet shot me an enquiring look, but I waved it away.
“Ask Rick about it,” I said.
“Yeah, well, you better get onto that whole poltergeist biz, babe,” Janet said as she toweled off her face and prepared to enter the fray once more. “The gap is only going to grow the longer you leave it.”
By the time that Madame Scaleblade called a halt to the bloody proceedings, sweat was pouring off everyone present and there were some very red faces. Our teacher dismissed us, and Qildro stomped off at the head of the knot of students.
“Justin,” Odette said, suddenly catching me by the arm, “it comes to my ears that you and your fraternity do not have access to a poltergeist-run dungeon?”
I shook my head.
“And the Headmaster ‘as not suggested anything?”
“Not to me,” I said, “but don’t you worry, Odette, we have a few irons in the fire as far as that is concerned.”
Odette looked slightly skeptical. “Well, you’ll ‘ave to find some way of fast-tracking the progression of your brothers, I think. You don’t seem to ‘ave many problems, but they will soon.” She looked at me from under those heavily penciled lids and gave me a quick smile. I thought I caught a glimpse of a couple of gold teeth in the back of her mouth. “Even your powers are limited. Even you, as a Creation Mage, will benefit from a poltergeist-run dungeon.”
I smiled at her. “I’m on the case, Odette. I just need a little more time.”
I made for the exit of the arena with Rick by my side, the others still having classes to attend and needing to get themselves washed and into fresh clothes beforehand. On nearing the stone archway at the top of the steps, Arun Lightson stepped suddenly out from behind a crumbling pillar. Instinctively, I summoned my vector into my hand and my muscles tensed, ready for a fight. Arun, however, simply extended his hand as if to shake mine.
“Just wanted to congratulate you on another excellent display, Mauler,” he said. “You fought well today.”
Cautiously, I extended my own hand and we shook.
“Thanks,” I said, and watched as Arun turned and hurried away.
“What the fuck was that about, friend?” Rick said.
“I’ll tell you what that was about, big fella,” I said. “Looks like we might be able to get ourselves a poltergeist.” I held out the piece of parchment that Arun had secreted into my hand when we had shook. On it was written:
My cousin, the Death Mage will meet with you tomorrow. Details to follow.
Chapter Seventeen
That night, as I was walking from my en suite bathroom to my bed, I was arrested in my stroll across the carpet by a tapping at my window. My head snapped around, my senses alert, taut and twanging like violin strings that have had too much coffee and Ritalin. My staff appeared in my hand, conjured with the speed of thought. All I could see in the night-black windows was a reflection of my lit room. I opened the door that led to the balcony and stepped aside, the spell for casting a Storm Bolt tickling at the forefront of my mind and waiting to be deployed.
An origami bird fluttered through the open door. I watched it sweep once around the room, my staff still raised. I had seen plenty of weird shit since coming to Avalonia—the kind of bonkers events and bizarre creatures that would have got me whisked off to a nice padded cell back on Earth if I had tried to tell someone what I had seen. Seeing all this nutty stuff was more than enough for me to treat an enchanted paper bird with caution. It might be a bomb, or it might transform into the sort of monster that would give you a paper cut that would leave you without all your limbs, or—
It fluttered down and perched on my shoulder.
In response to this touching bit of magic, I reached up and crushed the paper bird in my fist. I wasn’t in the mood for any eldritch baloney. I’d just brushed my teeth, for goodness sake. I opened my fist to reveal the crumpled bit of parchment. My sleuthy hindbrain noticed that it was the same sort of parchment that Arun had handed me earlier. I opened the intricately folded paper and read the note that I had known was going to be written on the inside. It was in Arun’s flowing script.
East side of the Academy. On the edge of the forest. The crypt. 10am.
I crumpled the note and smiled. So, there was the meeting place. As sinister-sounding a spot to meet a Death Mage as I could think of—although if Lightson and his cousin had really been sticking to narrative convention, we would have been meeting at midnight or at the next full-moon or something. Never mind. You couldn’t have everything.
Before I turned in, I ran downstairs and told the rest of the crew what the plan was.
“But we’ve got a Physical Fitness class at that time tomorrow,” Nigel said at once. He was always edgy when it came to ditching classes. Not because he was worried about missing out on important information—he was, after all, a walking encyclopedia, one of those ones that comes in volumes—but because he was worried about hurting the feelings of the tutors.
“You guys don’t have to worry about that,” I said. “I’ll be going alone to this little rendezvous.”
“Oh sure,” said Damien, from where he was lounging on a rug in front of the fire and rolling a little iridescent flame across the back of his knuckles like some people do a coin. “Meet up with Arun and his unknown Death Mage cousin on your own in some spooky crypt. What could possibly go wrong?”
“Nah, I don’t think there’s anything to worry about,” I replied. “Arun is a narcissistic and arrogant fartbox, sure, but he’s also smart and does what is best for him. He needs allies by the sounds of it, and having him around us will at least mean we know where he is and what he’s up to. Besides,” I said, looking at Bradley, “we started off with you trying to melt me in
to a puddle, and look at us now!”
Bradley laughed. “Yeah, I see your point. But if he’s predictable in his self-serving ways, let me tell you that that cousin of his is not. Horatio has always been erratic and moody, ever since we were all kids. Just be careful.”
“I’m always careful,” I said. “And don’t worry, I won’t have any qualms about turning either of those two into crystal statues at the slightest whiff of a double-cross. Besides, it might raise a few suspicions if all five of us are absent from class tomorrow.”
Nigel waggled his head in a way that told me he saw sense in what I was saying.
I could tell the boys weren’t all that convinced. Happily though, the boys seemed to trust me when it came to digging myself out of some impressively deep holes. What also helped, no doubt, was the fact that dudes couldn’t be assed expending a lot of energy on trying to persuade other dudes out of doing something foolish. One warning is usually all you got, then it was up to you if you wanted to pursue a course leading all the way to Dumbassville.
However, as I left the lounge to make my way to bed, I couldn’t help but notice the dubious looks my fraternity brothers exchanged between themselves.
***
Bless their little cotton socks, but those cheeky motherfuckers that I called fraternity brothers really were a sly bunch of S.O.Bs.
I had expected to come down from my room the following morning at nine-thirty to find at least one of them waiting for me in the grand and slightly dilapidated main hall of the house. When I did descend the creaking, sweeping staircase, what I found was… emptiness. What I had not seen coming was what awaited me when I opened the front door and stepped out into the mist that cloaked the hilltop.
“There’s the mystery man!” Janet Thunderstone said, punching me playfully on the arm as I shut the door behind me, my mouth hanging somewhat slack.