Creation Mage 5

by Dante King

  “Bloody hell,” Bradley said. “You’d think we’d be a bit less jumpy, what with everything that we’ve gone through together.”

  “I’m not sure if that logic counts when you know that there’s a dragon lying in wait somewhere ahead of you,” I said.

  Bradley opened his mouth to reply to this, but then something else came flying out of the portal.

  It was a dagger.

  It spun through the air, a spinning blur of silver, and hit the back of the magical broadcasting device with a hollow thunk. Immediately, the broadcasting sphere emitted a cloud of green smoke, zoomed around the passageway like a punctured balloon, and crashed into one of the walls.

  I didn’t see it fall to the stone floor, though I heard it. My eyes were glued on the portal and the five black-clad figures that had emerged from it.

  It was the silver-haired Blade Sisters, led by none other than Acer.

  “Goddamn, I was expecting you ladies to show up,” I said as the Sisters came to a standstill some twenty paces from us. “But I thought you’d wait at least a little while. Lure us into a false sense of security and then pounce when we were at our most tense.”

  Acer looked around at my six companions. Her all-silver eyes shone dully, like a couple of ball bearings, in the light cast from high above.

  “You all look quite tense now,” she said.

  I hated to admit it, but she was right. If anything, the longer me and my friends spent on an adventure, the more at ease we became. Hitting us straight away was a tactic that actually made perfect sense. I looked over at Nigel and saw a bead of sweat trickle down the side of his forehead.

  “You’re here for me,” I said.

  “Well, obviously,” Acer said.

  “We’re fucking bounty hunters—I suppose you know that?” said the Blade Sister with the slicked back hair. “Bounty hunters are always looking for someone.”

  “Only this time,” said the shaven headed sister, “we’re not on a contract. This mission—you—is all about us.”

  “Sometimes,” the sister that I had nicknamed Lara because of the long plait that ran down her spine, “girls have got to do things for themselves.”

  “We’re going to use you, Justin Mauler,” the woman with the ponytail tied up at the side of her said. “We’re going to use you up so that we can become even stronger. So that we can become more feared even than that freak Mortimer Chaosbane!”

  “Your fecundity is what we need to enhance our spells, Justin,” Acer said. “We’ve got our eyes on the prize. We know that when you fuck us, you’ll increase our power. But you don’t need to be alive to fuck us. We’re going to take what you have, whether you’re dead or alive.”

  “A shame in a way,” the chick with the slick backed hair mused, a cruel smile flickering on her lips.

  “How so, Pravum?” Acer asked.

  “He’s not so bad to look at,” Pravum said. “But I don’t think he’s going to come quietly.”

  “No,” Acer said. “I shouldn’t think so.”

  “Oh my good gods,” Leah said airily, “do you bitches ever shut up? Blah, blah, blah, that’s all I’m hearing, you beautiful idiots. Why don’t you put your money where your mouth is? Then, when I’ve finished smashing your teeth in, I can use the cash to buy myself something pretty.”

  The cocky smiles on the Blade Sisters’ faces vanished. Disappeared as quickly as a lightbulb blowing. Their hands drifted casually down to their sides. Their fingers twitched in the air, tracing tiny shapes. They reminded me of gunslingers in the Old West.

  “Just so you know,” I said, in a quiet voice that nonetheless carried in the silent cavern, “we’ll be looking to kill you guys too. I hope there are no hard feelings.”

  Acer smiled. “Wouldn’t be much of a challenge if you weren’t.”

  I glanced around at my assembled squad. The boys looked ready. Mallory and Leah were standing nearby, seeming as casual as if they were going to spend an hour or two at the spa.

  I fingered the ring with its onyx stone, sitting tight in the third finger of my right hand.

  “All of you,” I said to my allies, “no one kills them but me. Once I have three of them, you can go for it. Until then, I need their energy just as much as they want mine.”

  There was a murmur of ascent from my gathered crew.

  For the space of five breaths, nobody moved an inch. Somewhere, off in a distant cavern, the sound of trickling water came to my ears.

  Then, Acer moved.

  And the battle began.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  On the ground, it quickly became apparent that the Blade Sisters were even more formidable that they had been in the air. The team of five highly capable female mages forced the seven of us backward, down the passageway, toward whatever the hell waited for us further into the cavern.

  Spells whined and cracked over our heads as magic was traded between our two sides. Chunks of rock were blown form the walls, stones rattled down from the ceiling, and dust filled the air.

  The boys and I were definitely becoming more proficient with our spells; becoming more adept at actually dueling with our opponents, rather than just throwing all our spells at them and hoping that it would be enough to defeat them.

  Nigel flew overhead, harrying the women with his localized tornadoes and spraying sand at them to put them off their aim. In response, the woman with the shaved head conjured sentient throwing knives that hovered in the air and flung themselves at the Wind Mage whenever he got too close. Nigel ducked and weaved like a fighter plane avoiding an air-to-air missile, while the knives flashed around him and shattered against the cavern walls.

  As soon as I saw just how quickly we were going to find our backs pressed against the nearest wall, I attempted to buy us a little time by tossing down some Arcane Mines. The high-energy Earth and Storm Magic hybrid proximity mines should have given the five enemy mages pause for thought, but Acer threw a series of throwing stars at them, setting them off.

  My team and I barely cleared the zone of the blast radius when the Arcane Mines exploded, showering dirt in all directions and lighting up the dim cavern with bolts of purple lightning that crawled up the walls, leaving scorch marks behind.

  Bradley was once more in his Crimson Titan form. He had activated the flaming axe augmentation that he had been issued by the Inscribers and was swinging and slicing at the Blade Sister with the sideways ponytail. She was flipping and rolling out his way, two long rapiers in her hands, cutting back at him and scoring hit after hit upon his armor.

  Acer and I were at each other’s throats, though we were continually being forced apart by the ebb and flow of battle. I guessed that she was the alpha. If I could take her out, then the others would be massively rattled.

  Rick charged past me, going head to head with the sister with the slicked back hair, Pravum. She was armed with a beautiful katana, which seemed to move and shift in her hand as if it were made of liquid. The clash and crash of her sword against Rick’s axe reminded me of the big Earth Mage hammering away in his father’s forge.

  I threw up my staff and blocked a signature spinning saw blade that had pelted at me from out of the confusion of the battle. The saw blade ricocheted upward and buried itself in the face of one of the enormous Iron Dwarf statues, embedding itself in the solid rock of the statue’s eye.

  I had barely let out a soft, “Shit on a biscuit,” when the sister with the shaved head launched herself out of the melee and hit me in the chest like a leaping hunting cat.

  Unexpectedly as she had taken me, I was bowled off my feet and rolled away across the stony, level path. Before I could right myself, the woman was on me. One of her knees connected sharply with my manberries, and I let out a soft wheeze of pain.

  Then, a flash of light captured my attention, and my hand shot out and grabbed her wrist.

  I felt the razor-edged knife in her hand tickling at the stubble on my throat. I could just make out the handle of the knife out of th
e corner of my vision. Even this slim view was enough to convince me that this was the sort of blade that could cut you if you looked at it too hard.

  The shaven haired woman was all-muscle, as lean as a professional athlete. Her teeth were gritted, her silver eyes narrowed as she tried to force the blade toward my throat. I found myself subconsciously holding my breath.

  Time seemed to slow. Over the woman’s shoulder, I could see Damien and Leah being held at bay by the sister with the plait, utilizing some of the most dexterous and speedy sword play I had ever seen. Nearby, Leah was spraying her acid glitter at another one of the sisters, while she simultaneously blocked the crossbow quarrels that were flung back at her. Wherever one of the bolts was heading, Leah would somehow cast an instantaneous bubble that would capture the quarrel and rob it of its energy.

  The knife inched closer. My right hand was trapped under me, caught between my own thigh and the rock floor, so I was only using my left hand to fend off the shaven headed woman. She grunted and leaned more weight on her knife hand. As she moved, her weight shifted, and I found myself suddenly able to wrench my right hand out from under my body. I grabbed the woman by the throat and jerked my hand, trying to push her off me.

  The last chance hidden knife in my sleeve sprang open with an incongruously soft sound. The blade punched through the side of the neck of the Blade Sister on top of me. As blood poured out and drenched my chest, my hand slipped and the insanely sharp blade sliced through the side of her neck, completely severing the main artery.

  It was like something from Mortal Kombat. Blood, pumped by a strong and angry heart, fountained out like a geyser.

  I didn’t allow myself to be hypnotized by the grizzly sight. Instead, I booted the dying Blade Sister off me and got to my feet.

  I knew what I could expect from warriors like the Blade Sisters, and I was not wrong.

  When they saw the life leaving one of their fellows, they renewed their attack on us to such an extent that it was all we could do—even with Leah and Mallory—to keep our heads on our shoulders.

  Knives and magic zipped this way and that, more furiously than they had done before. In no time at all, I glanced behind me and saw that we had been driven to the very brink of a chasm spanned by a leaping bridge of iron. The bridge looked, somehow, to have been constructed from a single piece of metal, as intricate and fragile looking as a spider’s web, and yet as sturdy as anything that had ever been engineered. It emerged flawlessly out of the side of the cliff closest to us, leapt the dreadful gap, and then reconnected just as seamlessly on the other side.

  There was a tingle on my finger, and I felt the onyx ring that Rick had fashioned for me pulse coldly. Without looking down, I knew that this meant the Blade Sister whose throat I’d cut had died. The ring had captured the energy that her departing soul gave off.

  There was a cry from over to my left as Nigel was thrown out into the void by the woman I had nicknamed Lara.

  Instinctively, my breath caught, before I recalled that Nigel could fly.

  The Wind Mage plunged into the abyss before boosting up and out of it again and swooping back over the head of his attacker. I could read what the halfling was going to do from a mile away. Even as he buzzed back out of the chasm, he pulled his new throwing stars from a pouch at his belt.

  The woman with the plait running down her back watched Nigel approach. Her feet were set. Her mouth was a hard line.

  I sprinted toward her and had almost reached her when Nigel landed. He launched a throwing star at her with an unsophisticated overhand throw. Her hand shot out and deflected the star with a meat cleaver that had appeared suddenly in her hand. Nigel’s weapon went spinning away and landed heavily in the dust about ten strides away. He threw the rest of his stars, but Lara deflected them with equal ease.

  The Blade Sister grinned and launched herself toward him.

  Nigel just managed to duck backward out of the way of the slice, but I saw the cleaver’s blade leave a fine red line across his chin. As he hit the floor, he thrust out with a hand and hit the woman with the plait in the chest with a gust of wind. She rocked off balance for a second, her feet scrambling at the edge of the chasm, before she found her footing and righted herself again.

  “You’re dead, halfling!” she snarled.

  Nigel grinned as he held out his hand, and the throwing stars suddenly returned to him. The woman groaned as a dozen of the sharp and shiny things peppered her back. Her eyes widened as I appeared behind her.

  “Your name isn’t really Lara, is it?” I asked as I invoked my Crystallize spell, and the Blade Sister was engulfed in an instantaneous glassy tomb. With a casual sideways kick, I knocked the frozen woman off balance, and she plummeted off the edge of the cliff and was swallowed by the blackness.

  It took a good ten seconds for me to feel the cold glow on my finger that told me that her lifeforce had been added to the onyx ring.

  “Damn it, Justin,” Nigel said. “There goes all my throwing stars.”

  “Sorry,” I said with a shrug. “I’m sure Onico will craft you some more.”

  I wasn’t sure if the remaining Blade Sisters knew right away that yet another of their number had been taken care of. I decided that it was better to continue defeating them before they found out and got really pissed.

  Being three versus seven, it was not the most even fight that I had ever partaken in. But the Blade Sisters fought like such hellcats that it almost didn’t matter.

  Mallory was using mostly defensive magic to protect my fraternity brothers, almost as if she considered herself on a probation of sorts. She would drop ethereal shields in front of them when one of the sisters tried to blindside them, or turned flying knives into puffs of steam in mid-flight.

  Things were looking good for us.

  Right up until I got stabbed.

  Acer and the sister with the sideways ponytail were scrapping back to back. Using blades and swords and magic, they were managing to hold their own against Bradley and Leah on one side and Damien and Rick on the other.

  As I watched, wondering whether I should cast a Tundra Tempest or not, the woman with the ponytail sidestepped a lunging swipe from Rick’s axe, ran up the haft, kneed the Earth Elemental in the head, and performed a scintillating side flip over him.

  At the same time, from behind me, Pravum, who was fighting Nigel, flicked out a throwing star, and landed it right behind my ankle.

  I stepped backward, as the flipping figure of the ponytail-sporting woman headed toward me, and tripped on the embedded throwing star. I landed on my ass, jarred my tailbone, and then felt a human weight crash into me and knock the air from my lungs. A second later, a felt something pointy smack into my ribcage.

  It fucking hurt, I can tell you that much. Right between the third and fourth ribs. Whatever it was dug into me unmercifully.

  I looked up into the mad, wide, all-silver eyes of the Blade Sister with the ponytail. She glared down at me, through eyes like pools of quicksilver. Her face was contorted with delighted satisfaction. She shoved whatever it was she was jabbing into my ribs once more, and then released it and raised her hands above her head.

  “Done!” she screamed excitedly. “Fucking done, sisters!”

  I looked down. The handle of a small knife was sticking out of my shirtfront. It was all tangled up with my clothes so it looked like old Ponytail had stuck me good.

  Of course, she had no idea about the hidden mail shirt.

  Gods, but that fucking hurts, I thought. Even without the inconvenience of being punctured, it hurts.

  The woman was straddling my chest with her legs. She looked down at me smugly.

  “Die now, Creation Mage,” she said as she started gyrating her hips. It was the most uncomfortable bit of dry sex I’d ever experienced. “And know that with your death you make me and my remaining sisters more powerful than ever before!”

  “You fucking guys do talk too much, don’t you?” I said.

  I pulled the unbl
oodied knife out from where it had got all caught up in my shirt and slapped it into the woman’s lax hand.

  Ponytail opened her mouth wide to say or scream something, her eyes bulging in disbelief.

  “Not another word,” I said.

  I summoned a Magma Bomb into my hand and rammed it into the woman’s open mouth, breaking a couple of teeth on the way. Then, before she could do anything, I used my Telekinesis ability to launch her high into the air, as far as my magic would allow me to propel her. She rose like a fucking champagne cork.

  When she was about thirty or forty feet above the deck, the Magma Bomb went off.

  Ponytail exploded like a meat firework.

  Organs and body parts rained down.

  It was gross.

  I saw what I assumed to be the woman’s stomach land square on Pravum’s head and burst, covering her in bile and half-digested food.

  Over to my right, Damien heaved and vomited across the floor.

  To my amazement, Acer and Pravum had the presence of mind to make up their minds as to what they were doing in the blink of an eye.

  With a scream of rage from Pravum, the two women conjured flying surfboard-esque swords and shot through our midst. Nigel, Leah, and Mallory threw themselves aside so as not to be sliced in half as the pair of remaining Blade Sisters zoomed away.

  Bradley transformed his arms into cannons and fired a stream of Fireballs as they fled, but the projectiles missed as the sisters dodged this way and that. The Fireballs blew columns of dirt skyward.

  Acer and Pravum flew out over the void and, with a final friendly call of, “Fuck you, Creation Mage!” from Pravum, dove down into the darkness.

  We only had enough time to catch our breath when another humming sound issued from back up the way we had just been forced.

  All seven of us assumed fighting stances, readying ourselves for whatever fresh hell the universe deemed it necessary to drop into our laps.

  “Fuck me, it’s just one of those camera things again,” Damien sighed as the magical broadcast sphere shot around a bend and came to hover over us.