Creation Mage 2 (War Mage Academy)

by Dante King

  The first bomb went off, but missed our two pursuers by a country mile, but the shock of the blast slowed them in their tracks. This proved advantageous for us.

  The next two grenades detonated in mid-air just in front of our enemies. Blobs of sizzling hot magma flew in every direction, showering the two yellow team members. One was caught full in the face by the napalm-like substance. His hair instantly set on fire, his teeth shattered, and the flesh of his face melted into a grotesque wax parody of a humanoid countenance. He was dead and gone before he even hit the floor. The other guy managed to fling his arms up to protect his face, but this only served to prolong his agony. He went up like a torch and ran hither and yon. He obviously hadn’t been taught the stop, drop, and roll in elementary school.

  In the meantime, Cecilia and I had dropped down a level, careful to stay out of sight of a handful of yellow defenders clustering around their flag.

  From our aerial perch, I could see the other two members of our stealth team moving forward—now on the arena floor. However, even as I looked on, one of the two was gruesomely flattened by a sort of lighting-powered, human-sized mouse-trap that they must have triggered.

  “What’s your plan?” Cecilia asked me, ignoring the death of our teammate and looking down at the flag.

  I gazed down at the flag and its smattering of defenders. There were four of them. If we moved fast, Cecilia and I should be able to take them.

  “We’ve got to rush them,” I said. “Whoever has fallen already will be out of the regeneration stations by now. Things will be heating up for us again.”

  “Hey,” Cecilia said, looking down and back toward the direction of our base, “what in the worlds are those two idiots playing at?”

  It was Arun and Qildro. They were making their way quickly but furtively toward the opposition’s yellow flag.

  “Isn’t Qildro supposed to be defending?” Cecilia asked.

  “Yeah,” I said grimly, “he is.”

  Trust those assholes to go against my plan.

  The two members of Frat Douche were clearly intent on sweeping in and stealing the flag and the glory for themselves.

  “Those motherfuckers are going to ruin this,” I said, with a certainty I felt in my bones. “Let’s go!”

  I led the way, leaping down toward the enemy’s base on a series of vertical stepping stones. As we went, I conjured an Arcane Mine and threw it down ahead of us. The sticky bomb landed square in the middle of one of the yellow defender’s backs and immediately detonated. The woman whom it had landed on was vaporized. Chunks of earth and charred flesh were expelled outward, propelled by lightning bolts that licked one of the other remaining defenders across the back. The big Frost Elemental cried out and turned, just as Arun and Qildro emerged into the clearing in which the flag was set.

  Another of the defenders let loose a quick volley of bullet-like stones from a club-like vector. These ate up the ground in front of Qildro’s feet like machine gun fire, sending little spouts of the earth heavenward. Then one connected with his kneecap and blew it out in a hideous spray of gore. Qildro collapsed.

  Arun took out the lightning-struck Frost Elemental with his spectral spear, piercing him neatly through the throat. The enemy mage who’d taken out Qildro cast a spell that made the ground in front of Arun rise up like a scorpion’s tail. The first strike made Arun spew black blood, and the second caved his chest in like a wet cardboard box. He sputtered weakly, clinging instinctively to life.

  That left Cecilia and me to face two defenders.

  Cecilia conjured her icicle spear and lobbed it with the skill of an Amazonian hunter at the mage who’d killed both Qildro and Arun. In response, the enemy mage summoned an earth shield and blocked it. Then the second defender let loose with a rolling ball of purple lightning that shot toward Cecilia. It would have cooked her goose if I hadn’t used my Telekinesis power and thrown Arun’s dying body in front of the spell with a flick of my staff. Arun was folded in half by the force of the purple lightning, and his back broke with a sound like a pistol shot.

  Under cover of that unexpected block, Cecilia threw another icicle spear at the lightning thrower and caught him cleanly through the chest, killing him instantly.

  The earth mage fired off another hail of stone projectiles in Cecilia’s direction. Two rocky bullets punched into her chest and knocked her tumbling.

  The earth mage looked pretty fucking pleased with himself—as he should have, what with taking out three members of the opposition team in the space of thirty seconds—right up until I rammed the spiked end of the flag through the back of his neck and out through his mouth.

  “Nuuuuuh,” he said, and collapsed dead.

  Instantly, I was at Cecilia’s side. I was no medic, but I could tell that, for a person her size, the blood that was pooling in the dirt around her was probably most of what she had in her. Her face was milk white, her usually crystal clear sapphire eyes were clouded with pain.

  “It’s okay,” she said.

  I nodded mutely. It was a fucked up feeling, seeing someone you were quite fond of die, even when you knew they were going to regenerate in a few seconds.

  Then I snapped my fingers and cursed. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small vial of Warrior’s Salve from a pouch on my belt.

  I poured some of the tingling liquid into my hand and unceremoniously shoved my hand down the front of Cecilia’s shirt. A few wolf whistles rang out from the crowd, but I barely registered them. I wasn’t sure if the potion would do much for the wounds that Cecilia had sustained, but it was the thought that counted, wasn’t it?

  Cecilia cleared her throat, gulped, and said, “Go, darling.” There was a trace of her old impatience entering her voice.

  I nodded again and left her.

  This time, clutching the flag, I didn’t try to do anything fancy. I just legged it.

  Stupid Qildro and Arun; if they had fucked up our chances at winning this thing with their glory hogging…

  I hurdled a jumble of logs and rolled absentmindedly under a hail of crossbow bolts that fired out of a concealed nook. I darted around a pillar, just as a yellow team member appeared, looking the other way, and ran on. I knew it was only a matter of time before—

  Is that the fucking blue flag?

  It was. One of the yellow shirted team was pelting toward me, our blue flag clutched tightly in her hands.

  Those stupid a-holes from Frat Douche had left our defense weak, and the yellow team had managed to get their hands on our flag.

  Great.

  The yellow shirted woman gritted her teeth and charged toward me, the sharpened point of the flag lowered and aimed at me like a lance. Her auburn hair flew out behind her as her mouth twisted in a snarl that showed off some quite meaty canine teeth.

  Then Torros, the Wood Elf, stepped out of nowhere and let loose with his spell-cannon. The blast caught the charging yellow shirt right in the face with a spray of splinters that flayed the skin, right down to the skull. She went down like a sack of potatoes.

  “Nice!” I yelled, sprinting forward. “Get our flag, To—”

  Torros shrieked in pain as a thong of fire looped itself around his neck and pulled taut. There was a soft sizzling sound, then the noose went through his neck like a hot wire through butter. In an impressive gout of blood, the Wood Elf was decapitated. His blood splashed me across the face as I darted past him and snatched up the blue flag too.

  Then my world dissolved into utter bedlam.

  It seemed to me that every player in the game was suddenly alive and kicking and had converged on the central corridor leading from one base to the other. The crowd was going absolutely bonkers as spells flew in all directions. An explosion rocked me as I pounded across the arena floor, leaving my left ear singing with momentary deafness. One of my team took an arrow in the shoulder as I flashed past with both flags, heading toward our base.

  “Run, Justin!” Cecilia screamed at me. She had obviously healed from my W
arrior’s Salve potion and was now heading straight back to base, knowing that I would be coming in hot and might need a little covering spellwork.

  Stinging icy hail lashed across my face as a frost spell punched into a pillar next to me. I ducked around it and boosted as fast as I could across the last ten yards to my home base. I cast a Flame Barrier behind me as I went, picturing a wall of fire directly behind me. A few sizzling thwacks made me think that it had blocked at least a couple of shots, but I didn’t turn to find out.

  I dived headlong over some tactically placed mounds of earth, rolled to my feet, and planted both flags with a hard downward thrust. Then I spun about to face the enemy.

  The arena was awash with light as thirty or so mages exchanged spells with one another. Our blue team had, of course, fallen back to protect the flags. The yellow shirts were pressing in on us, firing indiscriminately.

  I used my Metamorphosis spell and armored myself up, then set about erecting Flame Barriers to try and protect my teammates. Incantations cracked and whined over my head.

  Iowyn was a blur of blue fur streaking in and out of the mayhem. I had made her part of the assault team in our squad, as she looked as lithe and nimble as a panther. Now that I saw her in action, I saw that I had underestimated her.

  The Storm Elemental was far more dangerous than a mere panther.

  If there had ever been a panther that had spent a few years living on the wrong side of the tracks and then decided to take up MMA, it might have been as much as a handful as Iowyn. She would pop out from around some obstacle and, using only her hands and feet—which she seemed to have magically enhanced with vicious-looking claws—she would pounce upon some hapless opponent. After only a few seconds, she would fade away again, leaving her foe bleeding on the ground and looking like they’d just been run over by a lawnmower.

  The mossy and elegant Kryn, whom I took to be an Earth Elemental of some kind, was just as much of a handful. She was casting boobytraps that were completely invisible. When activated, these arcane traps would send vines snapping out of the ground to snare the enemy mage that had triggered them. If the mage in question was not freed quickly by a teammate, they were usually dispatched by one of my team and sent back to the regeneration station.

  “You made it!” Cecilia said from beside me. She was looking beautiful as ever, and there was no sign of her previous injury.

  “I did!” I replied. “Both flags, too!”

  We crouched behind the meager cover available to us and did our best to endure the sixty seconds that would see us claim victory.

  I tossed a few Crystal Magma Bombs out to spice things up for the attackers, who were coming forward with increasing carelessness and desperation. They flared bright orange as they exploded, coating a couple of unlucky yellow shirts in sticky magma.

  A movement out of the corner of my eye made me spin. One of the opposition team was pelting out from behind a tumbled ruin. All hell was breaking loose around us, so he had managed to sneak within ten feet of me before I had noticed he was there. With all the flashes and explosions and noise and smoke and dust, it was a miracle I had noticed him at all. It was like being at the Brooklyn Bridge Park when Macy’s 4th of July fireworks got set off; complete and utter chaos reigned.

  The good thing about being a human from Earth was that, sometimes, not instinctively casting a spell could actually be advantageous. My natural reflex, on coming face to face with this mage, was not to go through my mental armory, select the best spell for the job, and let him have it. It was to raise my fist and deliver a textbook haymaker to his right eye.

  It was a sweet punch. I caught the mage absolutely plumb and lifted him off his feet just as he was pulling back his own arm to no doubt call some hellfire down upon me and blow me into three-hundred crispy Justin nuggets.

  As he crashed to the deck, and I raised my staff to finish the job, the klaxon blared—long and loud. The crowd erupted. It was as if one-hundred Cockatrices had been coerced into forming a choir. It was deafening. Overwhelming. Intoxicating. I found Cecilia and hugged her to me, lifting her from the ground.

  My throat was raw with smoke and dust, but still I managed to croak out, “We did it.”

  Cecilia nodded and yelled into my ear, “Yes we did, darling!”

  We had won.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Our team was escorted back to the contestant holding area by a bunch of orange-clad officials, amidst gails of cheering and rapturous applause. The adrenaline, relief, and happiness was pounding through me like the sweetest cocktail I’d ever known. Not wanting to fail at capitalizing on anything, I pulled my blue shirt over my head, twirled it about, and launched it into the crowd. A pair of kids—an Earth Elemental and a Fire Elemental, from the look of it—started playing tug-of-war with my shirt, only to have some enormous troll-looking dude snatch it from their hands.

  Throwing my shirt might have been a bit of a showboat move, but that was the thing; if sponsors in this world were anything like sponsors of sports-stars back home, then they knew how valuable a marketing tool a fan-favorite could be.

  When the sixteen of us had been returned to the holding area, I was so jacked up that I felt like I could have bitten a brick in half.

  As soon as the opaque shield was back in place and blocking our view of the arena, Arun Lightson turned to me and sneered. “Bloody hells, Mauler, could you be any more of a showoff? If you’re not careful, you’re going to have to start carting your ego around in a damned wheelbarrow.”

  I turned to look at him. Something in my eyes must have warned him that he was treading on unstable ground because the smirk plastered across his haughty face faltered a little. I pointed a finger at him and wagged it.

  “You know, Lightson,” I said, “they say that a drought usually ends with a flood, and I think I’ve been pretty fucking good with holding back the storm that I could have unleashed on you today.”

  Arun tried to recover some of his bluster, looking around at the other members of our team as if he thought they might back him up. Unsurprisingly, the only person who stood by his side was Qildro.

  “You’re nothing but trash, Mauler,” he said.”Where you get the balls to think that you can order the likes of us around is beyond me—or anyone else here for that matter.”

  I snorted. “I didn’t order anyone around, buddy. I just came up with a plan, and it happened to pay off. To the benefit of everyone, I might add.”

  Arun tried to start up with some fresh bullshit, but I cut across him.

  “You know what the problem with you two is, don’t you?” I said. “You’re like hard-shell tacos: in no universe are you not a fucking waste of time and a pain in the ass.”

  There was some appreciative laughter at this. There are few things in the history of the world more annoying, in my experience, than hard taco shells.

  “While you two were trying to steal the glory, I bet there were a few people in this group who got nailed because of you.”

  “Me for one,” said Torros the Wood Elf, eyeing Qildro in a pleasingly unfriendly fashion.

  “And me,” a young woman with platinum blonde braids hissed. She licked her lips, revealing fangs and a forked tongue. “You guysss, almossst cost me my lassst life out there!”

  Arun might have been a world champion asshole, but he wasn’t an unintelligent man. He could tell when it was better to keep his trap shut and toss his shovel than keep digging the hole he was in.

  “And after that exhilarating round,” Chaosbane’s voice boomed once more through the stadium, “we take a short break while our arena is prepared for round two!”

  A break sounded good. I walked over to the refreshment table and grabbed a bottle of Lemon Roots Revivor. I took a long drink. I hadn’t realized until that moment how parched I’d got in all the excitement. As I was refreshing myself, the beautiful Elemental duo of Kryn and Iowyn wandered over.

  “Hello, ladies,” I said.

  “Hey,” Kryn said, and Iow
yn nodded.

  “Will you allow me to say that I thought you were fucking incredible out there at the end of the Capture the Flag round?”

  “Yes, I think we can let you say that,” Kryn replied with over the top graciousness.

  “Those tripping spells that you were laying down,” I said, “those poor bastards didn’t know their ass from their elbows when one of those got hold of them.”

  Kryn beamed at the compliment. “What can I say? I have green fingers.”

  Running my eyes over the woman’s emerald, moss-like hide, I couldn’t help but think that I wouldn’t have minded getting my fingers a little green. And more besides.

  “And Iowyn,” I said, turning to the other young woman, who was smoothing her glossy coat down on her shoulder, “remind me to never fuck with you, you badass.”

  Iowyn grinned. “I think you could take me.”

  “The question is if you could take him,” Kryn said before planting a hand over her mouth as though to whisper, but she was speaking at a regular volume. “I hear he’s got quite the member.”

  I laughed. “I’d say we could give it a shot sometime, see how you go taking me.” I shrugged nonchalantly. “You might surprise yourself.” I recalled my little trip on The Pleasure Cruise earlier that day, but I doubted I’d ever have the time or even the energy for a round with these two beauties.

  “Look, we just wanted to be quick,” Iowyn said. “Alura has told us what’s been going on at your frat house—”

  “She’s been gushing to us about you actually,” Kryn giggled, brushing an imaginary speck of dust from her bare, mossy shoulder.

  “Anyway, we know that you’re trying to score sponsorship with a Rune Mystic, babe. We just wanted to let you know that after what you did out there, organizing everyone and everything, we’re happy to help you and Cecilia get into the top two in this round.”

  I was surprised at this, and more than a little touched. “But what about yourselves?”