by Dante King
“Yes,” Chaosbane said. “A minor thing, but it would have improved the event all the same. Had my dear cousin not vomited over my boots. That detracted—marginally—from the experience for me.”
“Only marginally?” I glanced down at Chaosbane’s vomit-splattered footwear.
“Yes, just a touch. You see, they were actually his boots that I had stolen when he and I were out on a bit of a debauche some weeks ago,” Chaosbane said thoughtfully. He clapped his hands. “Still, listen to me waffling on. I digress, mate. I had something to say to you, an observation to make, if you will.”
“I’m all ears,” I said.
Chaosbane’s eyes widened, and he looked me over carefully. Then he relaxed, his eyelids falling back down to half-mast. I comprehended, then, that the Headmaster was well on his way to a world-beating hangover.
“Gods, can you imagine if you were, quite literally, all ears?” he said and shuddered. “Revolting thought… So much wax… Anywho, the advice that I feel I should give you is this: your charming friends Ike, Dhor, and Qildro might have been easy to beat in this little rustic get together, but beating them in the Mage Games Qualifiers will not be so easy.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Ah, the very question I myself might ask, if I were not wise beyond my ears—years, I mean,” Chaosbane said. He took a pinch of some glittering red powder and sucked it up his nose. “They come from very wealthy families, and wealthy families can pay for—’bribe’, as I think the authorities know it—Inscribers to go easy on their members when it comes to such quaint things as magical tests. You see?”
“I see,” I said grimly.
“It’s true, Justin,” Enwyn said. “Those three are going to have a whole arsenal of powerful spells at their disposal by the time you meet them in the Qualifiers. Don’t think otherwise.”
“And after tonight,” Cecilia said, “they’ll be after you with a vengeance.”
Chaosbane clapped me on the shoulder, missed, and performed a graceful three-sixty spin that brought him back around to face me.
“Listen to these fine fillies,” the Headmaster said. “Nothing hurts more than a kick square in the pride.”
“So, what? You’re saying my frat brothers and I are going to have to train harder than ever, is that it?” I asked.
“Yes, indeedy-do,” Chaosbane said.
I frowned. “Are you about to say that I should pack it in for the evening and return to the dungeon?”
Chaosbane looked appalled. I might as well have told him to go and perform a particularly dirty sex act with his cousin, Igor.
“Justin, if you want to ensure that you’ll pass the Qualifiers, then you’re going to have to train rather hard, of course, mate,” he said.
Then, Chaosbane held up a finger.
“But, only after we’ve all partied hard tonight!”
The Headmaster’s handsome, rascally face split into the grin of a man who is on the verge of getting himself into a great tempest of trouble, but knows that he has the charisma to weather the storm.
“Now,” he said, ”I find my cup empty. I must replenish my personal stock of the life-extending elixir.”
“You, ah, don’t have a cup, Headmaster,” Cecilia pointed out.
“The mystery winds itself into ever greater knots!” Chaosbane said. “Excuse me.”
The Headmaster whirled off, but his place was taken almost immediately by Ragnar Ironskin, the tutor that was, essentially, responsible to see that I was fighting fit when it came to being a War Mage.
He did not pause to chat for long. He stayed only long enough to flash his metallic smile at Cecilia, Enwyn, and I, and then say to me, “The white staff is almost within your grasp, lad. All you have to do is get through the Qualifiers in three days and it is yours.”
Before, I could ask a single question—the top one being, “Why the fuck can’t you just tell me now?”—the Viking-looking warrior had melted back into the crowd.
I looked over at the girls.
“Right,” I said, “bring on the Qualifiers.”
Chapter Four
I trudged slowly down the stairs on the day after the party. The hangover that I was experiencing was a testament to the amazing time I’d had. I felt like my eyeballs had been dipped in lemon juice and then deep-fried. My brain seemed to have been left out under a hot sun so that it rattled around in my head like a desiccated sponge.
When you’re suffering from a case of the brew-flu, you can either let that hangover make you or break you. I decided to wear mine like a badge of honor.
“Fucking hell of a time,” I muttered and forced a grin to my face.
I met Damien and Bradley on the main flight of stairs that led down to the entrance hall. The pair looked a lot like I must have; disheveled and tired, but with a contented inner glow. It was the satisfaction of a party well thrown. The happiness that comes with the knowledge that our party would go down in the annals of Mazirian History.
“How are you boys feeling?” I asked.
Damien itched his black-haired head industriously and considered the question. “Well, when I woke up this morning and looked in the mirror, I couldn’t help but think that my eyes bore a striking resemblance to a couple of pissholes in a snowbank.”
I laughed.
“After a shower though,” Damien continued, “the world seemed to be a more hopeful place.”
“Showers,” I said, “you’ve got to love them. Especially ones that you can tell how powerful and how hot you want them.”
“Gods bless the en-suite bathroom,” Bradley said. “I practically blasted my skin off with my shower this morning.”
“I reckon with some of that potent-ass Ifrit Blend Coffee, made with your loving hands, Bradley, I might be half the man I used to be,” Damien said with a smile.
I nodded. “Yeah, coffee sounds like a great idea.”
“You know that you probably deserve to feel like half a man though, don’t you?” Bradley said to Damien as we walked slowly across the entrance hall.
“Why?” the pyromancer asked.
“Well, it’s only fair after you burned off half that chick’s hair,” Bradley said.
Damien conceded this point. “What can I say?” he said. “The heat of the moment took on a whole new meaning.”
Bradley led the way into the kitchen, and I braced myself to be confronted by the carnage that had been left by the party. To my delighted relief, however, the place was absolutely spotless.
“Am I dreaming?” I asked, looking at the gleaming surfaces and the complete lack of any detritus.
There wasn’t a single unconscious reveler in sight, not one cup or glass out of place. I looked over at the far wall, where I had a hazy recollection that Rick had started a knife-throwing competition at about four o’clock in the morning. He had drawn the target with a spreadable breakfast condiment.
There was no trace of Madame Miriam’s Moon Mango Marmelade on the wall, and not a single knife hole.
“How did this all get cleaned up?” I asked in amazement.
Bradley laughed, shrugged on his apron, and began making coffee. “That’ll be Barry. It’s another perk of having a poltergeist in the frat. They act as wardens of the dungeon, of course, but they’re also butlers too.”
I raised my eyebrows and puffed out my cheeks. “Well, shit, Barry must be one of the best.”
“I was just chatting to Cecilia last night,” Damien said, “and, from what she was telling me about her great, great, great—however many greats Barry might be in relation to her—grandad, I think he actually is one of the most powerful and experienced poltergeists that we could have found.”
“Don’t forget the most perverted too,” I said.
“You won’t hear me arguing with that,” Damien said.
“Yeah,” Bradley said, putting the coffee pot on the stove, “you should have heard some of the jokes he was wheeling out last night after the fight.”
“I did witness
the young woman who tried to throw her wine goblet at him and smashed out one of the parlor windows,” I said.
“She must have been really pissed if she was trying to throw a solid object at a dude who is, to all intents and purposes, a ghost,” Damien said.
“It was a girl from Nevermoor, I think,” I said, screwing up my brow in concentration, as I tried to recollect what Barry had done. “He said something about the poor chick reminding him of a bad day at sea.”
Bradley ignited another hob with a snap of his fingers and put a pan on to heat. “How’s that?” he asked.
“He said that she had a sunken chest and no booty,” I said.
Damien whistled and laughed in disbelief. “Wow,” he said. “Just wow. Can you imagine what a fucking handful that cheeky little hemorrhoidface must have been back when he was alive and sailing the skies in that flying ship of his?”
At that moment, as if lured by the growing robust scent of the brewing coffee, Nigel and Rick came through the door. I always loved seeing those two together. It reminded me of that movie Twins, with Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
“Look what the saber-toothed cat dragged in,” I said in greeting.
“Speaking of cats,” Nigel said, climbing onto one of the stools at the counter and looking wistfully at the coffee pot, which was just starting to bubble and chatter, “did anyone else wake up this morning and find that their mouth tasted like a cat had taken a dump in it.”
There was some laughter and a murmur of agreement from Damien.
“I think it was that goddamn Paradise Potato Liqueur that you and I were drinking on the front porch at one point,” Damien said.
Nigel nodded slowly. “Where did that even come from?” he asked.
Damien shrugged.
“Was that before or after Harmeni and I smashed out through the window and landed on the couch?” Nigel asked.
“Before,” Damien replied.
Nigel nodded again. “That,” he said, “would explain a lot.”
Bradley poured out five steaming mugs of Ifrit coffee, and we held them up together.
“Here’s to a fucking epic night,” Damien said.
“Here’s to friends, friends,” Rick added.
“Here’s to the bloody best kind of notoriety,” Bradley said.
“Here’s to coffee so strong that it’ll basically walk out of your cup and into your mouth,” Nigel declared, licking his lips.
“And here,” I finished, “is to the next step in our rise to the top of the Mage Games pile.”
We clinked cups and took grateful swigs of the potent brew.
The coffee was as dark as the inside of a werewolf and so strong that I was sure it would have put a hole through Nigel’s slippers if he’d spilled any on his toes. I didn’t know how the Ifrits roasted those beans—or where they were getting the beans from—but hot-diggidy-dog that coffee packed a punch.
Within a couple of sips, I felt as sharp as a tack again. I added a little sugar to my cup, just to take the edge off the brew, and then looked at the others.
Rick caught my eye and summed up how he now felt with a long, drawn-out, “Mmmmmm,” of satisfaction.
“All right, lads,” I said, “lets pull up a pew at the table and talk shop.”
“I’m listening,” Bradley said, “but I’ve got to keep an eye on these hashbrowns.”
The four of us who weren’t doing anything useful migrated to the kitchen table, which was somehow looking more spotless than it had even before the party.
“It looks like you could eat off this thing,” Nigel said in an impressed voice.
“You hear that, Rick,” I said, “you don’t even need to bother with a plate anymore. Bradley can just pour food straight out of a pot and onto the table in front of you.”
Rick gave me the finger.
“So,” Damien said, “what’s this meeting all about?”
Such was the potency of the coffee, that Nigel was already clicking his fingers distractedly and blinking rapidly. The halfling was a whizz when it came to all things brain-based, and clearly his neurons were firing up again.
“If I might be allowed to hypothesize…?” the halfling said politely.
“By all means Nigel deGrasse Tyson,” I said.
Nigel ignored the Earth reference, as most of my friends from the wizarding world now did.
He said, “I believe the time has finally come for a colloquium of stratagem. Concrete ways, means, and policies to ensure that we succeed in beating any and all competitors that we face in the Mage Games.”
I slapped the table and pointed at Nigel. “Ten points to the ever-astute Pippin Took over there, I couldn’t have said it better myself.”
“You reckon Nigel would be Pippin?” Damien said. “I was leaning more towards Sam.”
“Nah,” I said, “Pippin’s got a heart of gold, but he’s a cheeky bastard—and I know that all of us saw Nigel Windmaker here bust like a little naked firework out of his bedroom window.”
The boys laughed. Rick prodded Nigel in the ribs with a finger that was about the same size as the halfling’s arm.
“Not to mention that he had a pixie sitting on his pricksie,” Damien reminded everyone.
There was more laughter. I let it run for a few seconds and then banged my half-drunk cup of Ifrit coffee on the table to call order to the meeting.
“Let’s not get distracted,” I said, as what smelled like bacon spat and sizzled in the frying pan behind me. “Nigel is right. We’ve partied hard, now we have to cook up a plan that’s going to help us train hard.”
“We always train hard, friend,” Rick said.
“You’re right,” I assented. “What I meant was that we need a plan. Something that will enable us to train in the most efficient and smartest way possible.”
There was a clanging of pots and pans from behind us, the jingle of cutlery, and the sound of crockery being taken out of a cupboard.
“Well, what do you have in mind, friend?” Rick asked.
“Yeah, lay your vision out on the table, man,” Damien said, “while Bradley lays out breakfast.”
At that moment, Bradley smacked down a massive platter of fried eggs, bacon, wild boar sausages, hashbrowns, roasted tomatoes and red peppers, and wilted spinach.
I heard Rick give a groan of longing at the sight of the feast set out before us. Then there was a sound that was somewhere between a cat choking on a mouthful of kibble and a car being sucked down into a tar pit.
“Was that your stomach, Nigel?” I asked the halfling.
Nigel gave me a wicked grin and a wink. “Well, you know, I have been rather exerting myself. While you were all sleeping to work off a hangover, I was doing something a little more, how shall I say it, strenuous?”
“What are you talking about?” Bradley asked as he passed everyone a plate and a knife and fork. “I was up at least a half hour before noon, and you were still in bed.”
“Oh, I’ve been in bed, all right,” Nigel said in a casual tone that fooled absolutely no one. “But, I haven’t been sleeping. And I haven’t been alone.”
“Nigel,” I said, leaning forward to spear one of the wild boar sausages, “I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again; you are one sly little motherfucker! Good work, man.”
“The pixie chick?” Damien asked, cutting himself a generous wedge of hashbrown.
Nigel nodded.
“Invite her down if she’s still upstairs, bro,” Damien said.
“When I told her that I would be having breakfast with the boys,” Nigel said, taking another gulp of coffee, “she said that she would see me later and took off out the window.”
“She climbed out the window?” Rick asked.
Nigel gave him a funny look. “No,” he said, “she flew.”
“She left when you told her that you had to hang out with the boys?” Damien said. “Damn, Nigel, she might be a keeper!” He furrowed his brow as he stared down at his plate. “Hey Bradley, man,
what’s with the soggy leaves? Breakfast food shouldn’t be green.”
“They’re not just soggy leaves,” Bradley said in an aggrieved voice. “It’s sauteed spinach with garlic, olive oil, and just a touch of parmesan.”
Damien looked blankly from the spinach to Bradley.
“And,” Bradley continued enthusiastically, “I added a little pinch of nutmeg in there at the end, just to give it a little depth.”
Across the table from me, I watched Rick basically inhale a forkful of spinach. I doubted whether those beautiful sauteed leaves even came near a tastebud, so quickly did he lower them down the hatch.
“What do you reckon, big man?” I asked.
“Good,” Rick grunted. He was scoffing down his food so fast that if I’d leaned over his plate to get the salt and my watch had fallen onto his plate, it would have been inside Rick before I could recover it.
“Spinach is one of the most vitamin K-rich vegetables out there.” Nigel scooped up some roasted red peppers with a piece of toast and balanced a piece of egg on top with scientific care. “It’s also packed with iron, magnesium, folate, and vitamins B2, C, and A. If we’re going to start taking our training program to the next level we might also want to consider what we’re putting into ourselves.”
“You guys know about vitamins here?” I asked. “I always figured you were, you know, a few hundred years away from learning all that stuff.”
“We have alchemists, you know,” Nigel said. “And we’re not beneath borrowing knowledge from other worlds.”
“Right,” I said as I turned my attention to everyone else. “Well, Nigel is right about the whole vitamins thing. The way I see it, we need to focus on three facets of our game. Individual training, team training, and getting new spells from the Inscribers—and other sources, as far as I’m concerned—one of our primary considerations.”
“You’re saying, basically,” Bradley said, “that we need to become uber-warriors, is that right?”
“Yeah,” I said, “in a way, of course. We want to be the most badass badasses in a field composed of badasses. But, we also need to be smart about it, like I said. We can’t all just learn the most insane offensive spells that we can get our vectors on.”