Creation Mage 5

by Dante King

  “That sounds like it’s going to be damned useful,” I said.

  I then went on to tell the rest of the lads about the spells I had learned during my study session the previous evening, Leech, Raise Undead Wolverines, and Abomination.

  There were a few shouts of delight and enthusiasm from the boys when they heard about these first two new additions to the arsenal, and some uncomfortable comments about the Abomination spell. The memory of fighting the monstrosity in the frat dungeons was obviously still fresh.

  “What about the rest of you lads?” I asked. “Anyone else got anything shiny and new to wheel out during these Qualifiers?”

  “I’ve got something fresh, friend,” Rick said from my left.

  I flicked my head over to the side. The muscular Earth Mage was clutching his broomstick as if his life depended on it. His knuckles were white on the handle.

  “Rick!” I said. “You look so relaxed. What have you got to share with the group?”

  “Rock Wall,” Rick said shortly. He grimaced, as a small gust of wind wobbled him. “It’s defensive in nature—something I thought we lacked as a team, yes?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, big man!” I said, in a tone of mock outrage.

  The others laughed.

  “What d-does it do?” Nigel asked.

  “What does it sound like, friend?” Rick replied shortly. “It erects a damned Rock Wall around you and your teammates. One that only the strongest and most vindictive magic can penetrate. Also, it can be used to trap your enemies.”

  “Nice one, Rick,” I said. “I was thinking that we could use some more defensive spells, so that’ll do nicely. What about you, Nigel?”

  “Sandstorm is the name of the spell that I’ve got to grips with,” the halfling replied.

  “You’ve mastered it?” I asked.

  Nigel gave me an affronted look. “Of course, I’ve m-m-mastered it,” he said. “What would be the point of going to the Inscribers and not mastering a spell?”

  “Well what the fuck does it do, Nigel?” Damien asked.

  “To put it simply,” the halfling said as we began to bank right and descend toward the looming hulk of the Academy, “it puts a haze over your foes and can be used to whip up a painful sandstorm on them. It’s damaging, certainly, but is better suited as a distraction tactic, or a means of covering a team’s retreat.”

  “Good to know,” I said. “What about you, Bradley?”

  We were approaching the sprawling mass of the Academy now. The buildings glowed in the light of the morning sun, the marble facades gleaming as we swept slowly in toward it. I could see a fairly decent line of spectators already making their way up to the Academy from the village below. If they were anything to go by, this early on in the day, I guessed that the place would be teeming within an hour or so.

  “I’ve actually got a couple of new spells,” Bradley said modestly. “Well, I say new spells, but what I think it would be more accurate to say that I’ve had one of my spells modified or added to.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “The Crimson Titan has leveled up?”

  The others laughed. Ever since we had first met Bradley and he had tried to kill us in his mech-warrior style suit of enchanted plasma armor, there had always been good-natured ribbing on the part of the rest of us. That wasn’t to say that the Crimson Titan spell wasn’t a damned handy bit of magic—because it was. It was just that, well, boys will be boys.

  “What have you added?” Damien asked. “Rollerblades?”

  Bradley, instead of rising to the bait simply said, “No. I’ve had the spell altered so that I can now instigate Pyrocannons.”

  That wiped the grin off Damien’s face and replaced it with a look of jealous wonder.

  “P-p-pyro…?” Nigel asked.

  “Pyrocannons,” Bradley repeated.

  “That sounds like some bigass cannons pop out of your shoulders or something,” I said.

  We were almost at the roofline of the Academy now. Once we had cleared the main building, we would have to look for somewhere to land. Below us, spectators and fellow students were making their ways toward the arena, which was situated on the edge of the grounds of the Mazirian Academy, on the boundary of some heavy woodland.

  “You have almost got it in one, Justin,” Bradley said. “Only, the cannons don’t jut out from the shoulders.”

  “No?” I said.

  “Nope. My arms turn into cannons,” Bradley said, and he couldn’t conceal his delight at this. “Makes for pinpoint, lightning fast aiming.”

  “And what do they fire, friend?” Rick asked.

  “Fireballs,” Bradley replied.

  “Fucking nice,” Damien said.

  We slowed right down now, and I led the five of us off to one side so that we wouldn’t land on any of the milling crowd gathered below us. There was a bottleneck forming, where the press of people were squeezed together as they reached the one opening of the arena. Only a single set of stone stairs led down into the Roman-style colosseum. From here, the crowd could spread out again, before funneling into the woods on the other side, where the combat arenas were.

  “You said there were a couple of additions you had made, Bradley,” I said as we circled over to a blank patch of grass.

  “Oh yes, the other one was the Flaming Axe augmentation,” Flamewalker said.

  “Ooooh, that sounds nasty,” I said.

  “You g-g-g-get some axe hands this time?” Nigel asked.

  Bradley winked in concurrence of the halfling Wind Mage’s guess, and Nigel clapped his hands and whistled.

  The five of us touched down with varying degrees of finesse. Unsurprisingly, Rick was the most heavy-handed; he somehow managed to drop the last ten feet and smashed through a stall selling pickled dragonturtles—whatever the hell it was that they were.

  We shouldered our brooms and let ourselves be swept along with the crowd. The excited chatter of people eager to see some high-adrenaline bloodshed washed over us. It was heady stuff, made all the more so because I knew I was going to be involved in it.

  Someone nudged me on the arm, and I realized that Nigel had been asking me a question.

  “Sorry, what was that, man?” I asked the halfling.

  “I was just saying that, if you’re going to choose a Chaos Mage to gain Chaos Magic spells from, you could do a dang sight worse than, well, a Chaosbane, couldn't you?” the Wind Mage said.

  “Are you saying what I think you’re saying, Nigel, my old chestnut?” I said, putting my arm around the halfling and giving him a friendly noogie.

  “I think the dirty bastard might be,” Damien said, following up my noogie on Nigel with a titty twister of his own.

  “Ah, quit it!” Nigel said. “I’m just pointing out that—”

  “Sounds to me like you’re telling Justin that he should do the rumpy-pumpy with Headmaster Chaosbane’s kin, friend,” Rick rumbled from the back of the group.

  “I’m telling the Headmaster,” Bradley said, and we all laughed.

  “I’m just opining that Justin—we—haven’t met many Chaos Mages. And, I’m fairly certain Leah Chaosbane is the first female Chaos Mage that we have come across.”

  “And you would tap that if you were Justin?” Damien said as we wended our way through a few refreshment stalls standing outside the main entrance of the colosseum.

  “Are you mentally unbalanced,” Nigel said, “of c-c-course I fucking would!”

  I laughed and patted Nigel on the back. Privately, I agreed with him.

  “I like where your head’s at, Nigel,” I said. “That’s why you’re the brains of this motley crew. Besides, like you say, she’s the only female Chaos Mage we’ve come across as of yet. What are the other options?”

  “What? You wouldn’t fancy crossing swords with any of the Chaosbane chaps?” Bradley asked, somehow managing to keep a straight face.

  I thought of the lanky, chronically awkward Mort, the perpetually shitfaced Igor, a
nd the unpredictable, deadly genius that was Reginald Chaosbane.

  “If I was tempted to cross the pond and bat for the other team,” I said. “I think I’d want to be at least fifty percent sure that I’d wake up with my mutton dagger still attached.”

  The boys collapsed into paroxysms of pained laughter at this, and we made our way down the stairs to the floor of the colosseum in which a lethal assault course was usually found.

  The floor of the Academy’s combat colosseum was just as packed and busy as the last time I had been there. There was a carnival spirit in the air. A pervading sense of excitement and anticipation.

  Chanting and cheering suffused the air. I got that feeling in my stomach that I got when I was part of a large group of people who were in the mood for a jamboree; slightly careless and carefree, ready to embrace anything and everything.

  Like last time, for the Exhibition matches, there were rides and rollercoasters, booths, food stalls, and fortune-tellers. All sorts of incredible smells wove their way through the throngs of people. The sound of food frying, boiling, sizzling, and melting bathed my eardrums like a jazz concert that you could smell.

  “It always reminds me of the Lobster Wrestling Carnival on my island,” Rick said in his subterranean voice.

  “Lobster Wrestling Carnival?” I asked incredulously. “Can’t be much of a contest, surely, wrestling a lobster. Especially if the rest of your people are half the size of you, Hammersmith.”

  Rick gave me a puzzled sideways look. “Not much of a contest?” he asked. “You have never laid eyes upon a chattering reef lobster?”

  “I don’t think so,” I admitted. “Although, to be fair, I might have and not realized it.”

  “They’re six yards long and can weigh two tons,” Rick said levelly. “Claws that wrap around one of you puny Earthlings with no problem at all.”

  “Hm, yeah, now that you mention it, I probably would remember meeting a crustacean that size,” I said.

  Rick licked his lips. “You’d remember eating one too, friend,” he said cheerfully and gave me a slap on the back that almost had me coughing up ribs.

  I couldn’t help but think about Nigel’s words as we made our way through the crowds of peppy students and electrified locals.

  Leah Chaosbane was, undoubtedly, one of those alternative oddballs who would have become famous on planet Earth simply because of how different and hot she was.

  I fished around in my memory, trying to think of the word that I was looking for. After a few moments of cogitation, I snagged it. She would have been a socialite; famous for no other reason than she was quite weird and very attractive.

  Either that, or she would have been the lead singer in some underground New York punk band, who had reputedly died eight times and then disappeared.

  I blinked, steering myself off this tangent. That would be if she was on Earth, and we were not on Earth. Here, on Avalonia, she was simply a Chaos Mage; a rare breed certainly, but still just another mage at the end of the day.

  And there is no reason why she and I shouldn’t….

  We had been making slow progress through the crowds when I noticed that Leah Chaosbane was ahead of us. It was like she had tapped into the thoughts in my head and appeared to give them fuel and spice.

  So, there she was.

  And then she wasn't.

  And then she was.

  And then she wasn’t.

  I didn’t draw the attention of the others to it. Hell, for all I knew, they might have noticed it themselves and decided to keep the sight of the sexy, leggy woman, dressed in her blue sweater and enjoy it.

  She would pop in and out of view—but always in my view—in different poses. She might be leaning against a cotton candy stall, smoking a black cigarette next to a public toilet with a vaguely disgusted look on her face, or arm-wrestling an ogre in an arm-wrestling booth.

  Wherever she was, she would let me catch sight of her, draw within about ten yards of her and then disappear. She would then reappear further along the path that me and the boys were walking in some other pose.

  I caught a glimpse of her sitting at a Brain-the Goblin game, and was just about to draw the attention of Nigel to her, when none other than Ragnar Ironskin appeared.

  Ragnar was a handsome motherfucker, who looked like he could have stepped out of a Vikings set. He had dazzlingly metallic steel teeth that glittered in the fine morning. His hair was shaved around the back and sides, but his long white dreadlocks were tied up in a ponytail and ran down his back. Tattoos swirled in blue whorls along the sides of his shaven skull and down his muscular bare arms, and an assortment of ironwear pierced his ears and eyebrows.

  He was also one of my tutors at the Academy and supervised those training sessions which were held in this very colosseum. On many occasions, I had spent hours running through the assault courses that he superintended. In Ragnar Ironskin’s training courses, you might find a spear ramming through your bladder, a crossbow bolt piercing you through the frontal lobe, or a disguised swinging blade lopping your leg off at the knee.

  “Justin!” the Viking-looking instructor said to me. “I’m glad that you and I ran into one another!”

  I shook Ragnar’s hand warmly. He and I had fought side by side not too long ago, and I respected his ruthless efficiency in battle. He also had a code of honor of sorts which, though I held it in high esteem, wasn’t sure had any place in a world as unforgiving as this one.

  “How’s it going, Master Ironskin?” I said, trying to put on the graces of the respectful student—at least for a little while, before shit hit the inevitable fan.

  “Things are going well, thank you, Justin,” Ironskin said. “I was hoping to catch you before you moved through to the arena proper and potentially took your place on the combat stage.”

  “Why’s that?” I asked, half my attention still being used to scope out my immediate surroundings and see whether or not Leah was still floating about the place.

  Ragnar hit me with a surprised look. “Why’s that?” he asked, dropping his voice down so that I had to lean down to make out his words. “Because, if you get through these Qualifiers, I think it will be safe and prudent for me to divulge where you might find the white staff that belonged to your mother.”

  I couldn’t help but smile in a slightly annoyed fashion.

  “Surely, after everything we’ve been through, you trust me enough to tell me now?”

  Ragnar tilted his head back and regarded me. There was no sign of his characteristic easy grin.

  “You think that the reason I haven’t told you yet is because I don’t trust you?” he asked.

  I shrugged and looked around. My fraternity bros were a smart and tactful lot and had given me and Ragnar space to have our conversation.

  “No, no, no, my friend,” Ragnar said. “It has nothing to do with trust. What bothers me, what I am concerned with, is your magical abilities.”

  I opened my mouth to tell him how many close calls I had been through—how my whole life in this world felt like it had been a close shave—but Ragnar held up a hand to cut me off.

  “It’s not that. I know you’re capable. I know you are skilled and have many spells at your command, but if you go after your mother’s vector, you will be pitting yourself against adversaries the likes of which you have never faced before.”

  “Dun dun duuuuuun,” I said, before I could stop myself.

  Ragnar gave me a look that was far from impressed.

  “I’m serious, Justin,” he said, putting a strong hand on my shoulder. “You getting through the Qualifiers is the final test that will convince me that I’m not about to send the son of the two most powerful and forward thinking mages of our time to his death.”

  I put my own hand on Ragnar’s shoulder.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll waste all my competitors and then come looking for your ass. Deal?”

  “Deal,” Ragnar said, flashing me a brief silver grin.

  I gesture
d to the river of people that was broadening and deepening and sweeping across the arena toward a large, dark opening in the side of the arena.

  “I better get moving, Ragnar,” I said.

  “I’d say that was certainly an astute assumption, Mr. Mauler,” Ragnar said. “Do you mind if I walk with you and your fellow fraternity brothers for just a while?”

  I gestured ahead of me. “Of course.”

  We started our way through the crowds, allowing ourselves to be swept along by the ebb and flow of the spectators. On more than one occasion, I caught someone looking in my direction, nudging whoever they were next to and whispering animatedly.

  Behind me, the rest of my frat brothers strolled along. They were chatting unconcernedly amongst themselves; talking about who we might face in the coming matches and what the matches themselves might involve. Due to all our adventures and escapades, we hadn’t hadn’t gotten to know too many of our fellow students too closely—with the exception of Janet, Alura, and Cecilia. There were also Iowyn the Storm Elemental and Kryn the Wind Elemental, but I hadn’t seen much of them lately.

  There had also been Ar-undead, of course, but that blossoming friendship had gone kaput when he had been killed by his own cousin.

  “I see that you’re noticing that your fame is growing and following you a bit more than at the Exhibition matches?” Ragnar said.

  “Fame?” I scoffed, catching eyes with a couple of young local kids who openly gawped and pointed at me.

  “What else would you call it?” Ragnar said in a reasonable voice.

  “I… I don’t know,” I said. “Fame though, it’s one of those words with a lot of ego attached to it. I’ve just been doing my own thing since I arrived on this world. I’ve just been trying to get by, you know. I feel like I’ve been reacting most of the time, rather than simply acting, if that makes sense.”

  Ragnar grinned that metallic smile of his. He suddenly reminded me of the bad guy, Jaws, from the old Bond movies. That promptly brought memories of watching those movies with my uncle back to my mind. I missed the guy, and I wondered what he’d make of me now.