by Dante King
Magenta lightning surged out across Janet’s skin as she came, along her back and hopped across onto Cecilia. Cecilia, in turn, cried out as she climaxed. Her face contorted in bliss, her chin coated with Alura’s girl juice. Then the magenta lightning skipped along Cecilia’s shoulder blades and over her head, causing her pale blonde hair to rise like a cat’s fur, and grounded itself in Alura. The Gemstone Princess seemed to flash and sparkle with an iridescence that boggled the eye. She threw back her head of hair, which now looked like gossamer strands of spider’s web woven into braids. Flickers of light played over and through her form—not just the magenta lightning that had come from Janet as she orgasmed, but all the colors of the rainbow and beyond. It was the most multi-colored, multi-sensory orgasm that I had ever shared in. I pulled out and blew my load over Janet’s back.
Like a single bridge that has just had one of its legs toppled, we collapsed as one. Totally spent. I sat heavily onto a chair behind me, while the girls slumped across the table in a tangle of legs and arms. For a while, the only sound in the room was the rasp and pant of four sets of lungs at work.
After some time, Cecilia, whose head was nestled and cushioned between Alura’s thighs, gave a little sigh and sat up.
“Well, darling,” she said, her blue gaze falling on me, “I’d like to put my hand up and say that that was far and away the best foursome that I have partaken in.”
Alura laughed and propped herself up on her elbow. “Seconded,” she said.
I grinned at the trio of naked hotties lying in disarray on my fraternity house breakfast table. This was the sort of thing that actual dreams are made of.
I guess that means that I’m literally living the dream… Sweet!
We didn’t have time to shower, but we were in the kitchen, so we took turns washing each other over with a soaked towel. It was a rather intimate occasion that helped cement the fact that we were all, fundamentally, a team.
“Well?” Janet asked as I pulled my pants up, fastened my belt, and playfully flicked her underwear in her direction.
“Well, what?” I asked.
“Did we succeed?” Janet asked.
“In getting me off? Oh, yeah,” I said.
Janet snorted. “No, babe. I mean did we succeed in making you a more formidable mage?”
I grinned at the three girls as they began to locate and pull on their various garments. “I knew that’s what you meant.” I pulled my spellbook from my pocket and flicked quickly through it.
And there it was, a new combination spell. It was the thaumaturgical equivalent of a delta into which three rivers of magic ran—Frost, Storm, and Elemental.
TUNDRA TEMPEST
Summon lightning storm that rains icicle spears and conceals the caster from view.
“Shit, that sounds like it’ll do more than leave a dent in someone’s hat if you bust that out in the middle of a fight,” Janet said, slipping her top back on.
“Yes, I concur,” Alura said. She was already wreathed in her usual misty and glittering attire. “Though one has to wonder how widespread the storm’s effect is, and whether it hurts those who are fighting on your team.”
That was worth considering. I might have to actually entertain a little caution when using this trifecta spell. Although, if push came to shove and it was the choice between one big fuck-off hex or death, this spell certainly sounded as if it would do the trick.
There was the sound of the front door slamming just then, and the pounding of many booted feet and many voices heading toward the kitchen.
I glanced around at the girls. They were all looking fairly disheveled, their faces glowing with that post-coital satisfaction and satiation. Amusingly, the hair of each of them was sticking out from their heads as if they had all gathered around an enormous balloon and rubbed their heads on it. They might have been able to wash themselves with a wet cloth, but they hadn’t had the time to fix their hair. Judging by the way that they were looking at me, my do was probably in similar shape. As one, we all began to hastily comb our hair flat with our fingers.
The sound of boots got louder and louder. To my ear, it was like some sort of drum roll that was leading up to some unknown, but crucial, crescendo.
The door of the kitchen burst inward with a dramatic bang. It would have been quite the entrance for whoever was behind it, if it wasn’t for the door rebounding off the wall and bouncing back into the face of the opener.
“Sweet sizzling sphinx sphincters, that hurt!” came a familiar voice from the other side of the doorway.
The door opened again, slightly less violently this time, and none other than Reginald Chaosbane stepped through it. He was rubbing his forehead where the door had evidently struck him, but was looking no less resplendent for that. He was dressed in a dusty sable doublet slashed with crimson, a liberally stained white shirt, and his habitual pair of leather pants. His boots were travel worn. His mustaches were as effortlessly stylish as usual. His dark eyes probed the room, taking everything in in one steady sweep.
Then he grinned sardonically and said, “My, my, what have I missed?”
Chapter Twenty
It was quite the crowd that gathered around our fraternity kitchen table. Far more people than was usual, that was for sure, and far more people than I had been expecting. Four others had followed Chaosbane into the kitchen; Enwyn Emberskull, Madame Xel, Odette Scaleblade, and Ragnar Ironskin.
Looking at those five mages now, it was hard for me to think of a time when I had seen as badass-looking a collection of magical practitioners assembled in one space. I wanted to say that they were armed to the teeth, but only Ironskin and Odette openly carried weapons. Admittedly, the Vikingesque Ironskin had enough blades sheathed in scabbards and sleeves around his person for an entire company of cutthroats, while Odette had a curved scimitar slung at her back, between her dragon-like wings. Still, the five of them would have seemed to be armed to the teeth even if they were all dressed in their underwear.
Reginald Chaosbane was sitting at one end of the table, and I was sitting at the other. The Headmaster had his feet propped up on the scrubbed wooden surface and was smoking a long thin pipe and humming quite contentedly to himself. The rest of the table’s occupants—Enwyn, Ragnar, Odette, Alura, Cecilia, Xel, and Janet—sat in silence. We had been waiting for my frat bros to return from running the girls’ message. Chaosbane apparently had something to tell us, but he wouldn’t do so until the whole frat was here.
The door slammed once again, and I heard the boys chatting among themselves as they crossed the hall. Rick was first through the door, and he stopped in his tracks when he saw the five unexpected guests. Rick stopping caused a pileup behind him, and there was some muffled swearing.
“What the fuck are you stopping right in the doorway for, man?” Damien said.
“The Headmaster is here,” Rick said. “And, um… Well, there’s quite a party here now.”
“Then, please, do come and join it, gentlemen!” Chaosbane said cordially, as if this was his house. “I’d offer you some libations but, alas, I fear we have not the time, mates.”
“No time?” I asked. “We don’t even know why you’ve turned up yet, Headmaster.”
Chaosbane held up a finger as he took in a deep lungful of smoke. When he breathed it out again, the blueish haze coalesced into the shape of a fortress.
“We’re here,” he said, “because we must get to the Eldritch Prison posthaste. The usual portals seem all to have been closed, but it’s my hypothesis that Miss Thunderstone’s father has probably furnished her with some sort of private access, yes?”
Janet shook her head. “I have a private portal, yes. When I went to check on it only a little while ago, I found that that had been sealed as well.”
“Ah,” Chaosbane said, his air of relaxed amiability changing not a single iota. “Bugger.”
“What does that mean, Headmaster?” Janet asked.
Chaosbane’s eyes narrowed, and he pointed the stem
of his pipe at Janet. “It means,” he said, “a person who penetrates the anus of another person during sexual intercourse.”
“Huh?” Janet screwed up her face in confusion.
“Oh, you mean our little problem? Well, it means that we were about to head off to the Eldritch Prison, and now we are not.” Chaosbane put the stem of the pipe back to his lips.
Janet looked as if she was about to say something along the lines of, ‘Care to be a bit more candid, you frustrating ballbag’, but I cut across her.
“You guys know about the Death Mages, then?” I asked Enwyn.
Enwyn frowed. Her gaze flicked over to Chaosbane, who was now knocking out his pipe on the heel of his boot, before coming back to me. “What Death Mages, Justin?” she asked.
Then, as concisely as I could, I told the five newcomers what had happened at the crypt where I had organized to meet Arun and Horatio. I didn’t try and deceive Chaosbane or any of the rest as to why I had been having the meeting with Arun and his cousin. Chaosbane gave the impression of being on another planet most of the time, but he had a mind like a spinning saw blade; finally balanced, whirring and deadly sharp. Trying to bullshit that man… Yeah that was one dog that wouldn’t hunt.
When I had finished by telling Enwyn, Reginald, Ragnar, Madame Xel, and Odette about Arun’s fearful parting words, Chaosbane sighed theatrically and slipped his pipe back into the breast pocket of his doublet.
“Oh dear, oh dear,” he said, “it would seem then that we are most firmly and worryingly leaping boldly from the frying pan into the fire.”
“What do you mean?” rumbled Rick.
“Ah, you see, my dear fellow,” Chaosbane said cheerfully, “the expression seeks to colorfully illustrate the notion of going from one bollocksed up situation into another even more bollocksed up situation.”
Rick opened his mouth, a frown creasing his usually placid brow.
“I believe what Rick was asking, sir,” said Nigel “was more along the lines of what was the frying pan we were leaving and what is the fire we’re jumping into.”
Chaosbane beamed and raised his arms. “Of course he was,” he said, “Of course, of course, of course. Well, you see, whereas you lads and ladies thought that your chief problem lay with these Death Mages breaking into the Eldritch Prison, I must inform you that that original vexation has now been added to.”
“Added to how?” I asked.
“By the fact that the Arcane Council has descended upon the Eldritch Prison like fleas on a farm dog. Hence the sealing of the fortress.”
The front chairlegs of Janet’s chair banged down on the stone floor with a sound that made Nigel jump.
“What?” she asked in a slightly shrill voice. “What the hell are the likes of the Arcane Council doing heading to my father’s prison?”
Chaosbane, who still had his feet up on the table, pulled a battered flask from a pocket and slid it along the table to Janet.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“Sweet wormwood,” Chaosbane said. “It’ll take the edge off.”
“The edge off what?” Janet asked.
“It’ll take the edge off me telling you that, while the Arcane Council couldn’t find any dirt on me—strange, when I consider that my entire reputation is basically sculpted from mud and fecal matter—they were able to exhume a skeleton or two from your father’s closet.”
“What… What does that mean?” Janet asked. Absentmindedly, she unscrewed the top of the flask and took a hearty pull. She grimaced and almost retched. “Gods, that’s repulsive,” she said, sliding the flask back to Chaosbane.
Chaosbane helped himself to a glug or two, without even the slightest flicker of revulsion. “Hm, yes, it does have a certain piquancy,” he said. “That’s what you need though to take off edges, something rough.”
“So what the hell is going to happen to my father?” Janet repeated.
“Ah, right, yes, pardon me for getting sidetracked—a couple of big nights recently have left me feeling rather scatterbrained.” Chaosbane tweaked his mustaches with the air of a man tuning a radio. “Your father is, from what I gather, already under arrest. The Arcane Council, at present, has him under lock and key in his own prison—a cruel irony—and will soon be transporting him to the Castle of Ascendance.”
Janet sat mutely back in her chair, her face pale. Cecilia reached out and gripped her hand.
“Yes, all rather depressing and worrying,” said Chaosbane brightly, “which is why we must do something.”
“But you just said that, now that Janet’s private portal is closed, we aren’t going anywhere,” Nigel pointed out.
Chaosbane beamed. “Well done, that man,” he said. “Fine set of ears on you.”
“Hold on,” I said, looking around at my frat bros and the girls, “we’ve sorted out this portal with dwarf in Nevermoor, haven’t we? Let’s just use him as we planned. Surely, he’s not going to care if these four come with us?”
“That dwarf manning—or dwarfing—the portal station is, I happen to know, in the pocket of the Arcane Council,” Chaosbane said. “The problem being, of course, that once you are in the Council’s pocket, it is all too easy for them to reach down and scoop you into the palm of their hand. I fear our movements will be known almost instantly if we travel with his help.”
The faces around the table fell once more.
“However!” Chaosbane said, springing suddenly to his feet and tottering only a little. “Needs must! Let’s all of us make haste to into the village and get our derrieres to the prison to free Idman Thunderstone!”
“Wait, you’re going to let us tag along?” Damien asked.
Chaosbane raised an eyebrow. “I thought you would have liked to come Mr. Davis.”
“I do, but, you know, normally the teachers or whatever usually insist that their charges stay at home and stay safe. Then there’s a bit of back and forth and the students usually wear the teachers down and end up tagging along anyway.”
Chaosbane looked amused. “What the fuck would be the point in all that, mate?” he mused. “Waste of bloody time if you ask me. What the hell else is the use of training up a bunch of War Mages if it isn’t to raise a bit of hell and rock the boat and all the rest of it?”
Enwyn clapped her hands for silence. “Reginald,” she said, as everyone got to their feet, “aren’t you forgetting something?”
“Well, I’m not sure Miss Emberskull,” Chaosbane said. “Isn’t that the very essence of one forgetting something? If I knew that I’d forgotten something then it wouldn’t be forgotten— Ah, the disguises!”
Enwyn caught my eye and gave me a look that said, ‘And this man is one of the most brilliant mages among us.’
Chaosbane looked at us all, as though we were ugly ducklings that he was soon about to turn into beautiful swans with a simple hex. “I think that looking like Frost Giants is probably the most savvy idea, so if you could go and grab a few bottles of the Transmogrification Potion that I know that Madame Xel has been helping you put together…”
Bradley got up and went over to a cupboard. He pushed aside the bottles of ale and assorted liquors and found the glass flasks that contained some of the transformative Transmogrification Potion, which we had made the day that Arun had floated the idea of potentially helping us get a poltergeist.
“Aren’t we going to need something that’s come from a Frost Giant to pull this little stunt off?” I asked.
“Quite so,” Chaosbane said. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a dirty whitish-blue hairy scarf. An unpleasant, musty smell came with it. “This was given to me by my dear cousin, Igor,” Chaosbane said, stroking the scarf distractedly. “Finest Frost Giant pubic hair, plucked straight from the perineum.”
I saw Nigel and Cecilia exchange glances and look away so as not to set each other off laughing.
“Yes. Unparalleled softness,” Chaosbane said. “But a smell that would drive men of a stable mind quite barmy after having the thing
around their neck for only an hour or so. Anywho, we have the means to activate the potions and we have the potions. Let’s get a wriggle on and get down to the village.”
We made our way quickly down the hill. The mist was still fairly thick, which seemed to please Chaosbane. He was muttering to himself as he strode along at the head of the procession, swigging from his flask. Every now and again, he would reach up to cup some mist in his hand and hold his cupped hand up to his eye.
“What the fuck is he doing, trying to grab the fog?” I asked Madame Xel, who was walking along next to me.
“It’s a new spell of his,” the succubus explained.
“What’s the new spell?” I asked.
Madame Xel hit me with one of those smiles of hers. From right next to her, the force of her charm was like a twelve-gauge shotgun round to the libido. She was wearing a long coat which I figured she had donned for the occasion. She couldn’t exactly go around wearing what passed for PVC in this world if she was planning to break into a prison. “The fog,” she explained, nudging me with an elbow. “Reginald conjured the fog.”
I looked around at the thick mist that blanketed the whole town. It gave me a sudden, and whole new respect, for the eccentric son of a bitch that was leading us down into Nevermoor. The fact that he had the mana reserves and the skill to manipulate the very weather pointed to a mage who was not to be trifled with, no matter if he did look like he was held together by the clothes he wore and wishful thinking.
Chaosbane loped his way into town, his pirate’s swagger looking both ridiculous and fucking cool at the same time. Instead of leading our impressive group of renegade mage warriors around the town, he headed straight through the middle of it.
“Headmaster,” I said, lengthening my own stride so that he and I were on the same level, “shouldn’t we be avoiding the village center?”
“Ah, prudence, yes, a very good tactic sometimes,” Chaosbane said, running a finger across each of his mustaches. “However, the scent on the air tells me that there is something that we need to see before we leave for the prison, mate.”