Creation Mage 6 by Dante King (red scrolls of magic .TXT) 📗

The figure below fired a Fireball up at us as Reginald pulled on the reins and we took off once more.

“Yes, you see, old man Flamewalker was glad to see us,” Leah said. “He’s sending up fireworks to welcome us back! Kindly old soul.”

The sleigh sped onward, while Igor and Leah provided a rousingly festive chorus of a song that I could swear was sung to the exact same tune as one of my favorite childhood movies.

“Cold frosty beers and kindly drug sellers,

Pink powders and pills and drinks with umbrellas,

Enormous big doobies all tied up with string,

Chaosbanes simply love all of these things!

Naughty magazines and silicone breasts,

Girls dressed in leather with tattoos on their chests,

Wild forest orgies, or a quick midday fling,

Chaosbanes simply love all of these things!”

I knew the Chaosbane ranch when I saw it. From miles away. Anyone who had said more than five words to any of the four members of the family sitting on that sleigh would have been able to guess. It could belong to no other family. From my aerial vantage point, it looked like a cross between a mental asylum and Disneyland.

“That would be the Chaosbane ranch then,” I said as we cruised across the boundary and flew smoothly over the large estate.

“Not the Chaosbane ranch, but Chaosbane Ranch,” Mort clarified from behind me.

“We didn’t capitalize the name, mark you,” Igor said, leaning over the back of Mort so that I could hear him. “No Chaosbane would be that flashy and crass, old boy.”

“No,” Mort said. “It was the local authorities that did that.”

“Zip up your soup-coolers, cousins,” Reginald called amiably over his shoulder, “and allow our guests to enjoy the aerial tour of our family seat in peace.”

The land was as nature had made it: mixed woodland, punctuated with open pastures and meadows. Trails and tracks cut through the brush and trees, some only mere lines in the forest while others were proper bordered paths of shingle.

A large lake lay flat and still in a patch of particularly thick fir trees to which only a single thin path led. It sat as dull and tranquil as a giant, unpolished coin, its surface barely reflecting the flat light of the snow-burdened clouds. As we flew over it, I glimpsed a large chunk of rock half-hidden in the trees hemming the lake. It might have been a statue, but before I could take another look, we had passed on by.

Not far from this lake, at the other end of the thin path running through the woodland, was an enormous log cabin. At least, I called it a log cabin, because it was crafted from huge whole logs, but it was much more a country mansion than a cabin. The pitched roof was free of snow, and icicles as long as a man hung from the eaves. There were balconies and windows in profusion. In true Chaosbane style, some of the many chimneys were emitting smoke in shades of green and yellow and red. Even as I gazed upon the property, a bright blue flash came from one of the windows and the glass exploded outward. A second later, a turkey—a plucked, naked turkey—soared out of the broken window and began flapping as fast as it could for the far horizon.

“Did you see that?” I murmured to Mallory.

The Galadriel-esque figure looked at me and nodded.

“I imagine, Justin,” she said in a low, melodious voice, “that we’ll look back on that and think how normal it was.”

The house alone would have been enough to convince me that this was the home of the Chaosbane clan, but it was what lay in the grounds that really drove the point home.

It looked, essentially, as if some insane gypsy circus had rolled into the Chaosbane ranch house and erected a series of rides and entertainments for no other reason than that they felt like it. Masses of people milled around the collection of stalls and rides, screaming and yelling with delight.

“They’re not all members of the Chaosbane clan, are they?” I asked incredulously.

“No, no, no, mate,” Reginald chuckled. “We Chaosbanes are a fairly rare breed. There are bound to be a few members from the extended family down there, I don’t doubt, but most of the scallywags enjoying the attractions are just regular folk from around the district.”

“Your family organizes it?” Enwyn asked. “I didn’t know that, Reginald.”

“Our Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock likes to put on a bit of entertainment for the locals, my dear. It alleviates any miniscule feelings of guilt he might have built up throughout the rest of the year, from acting like the world’s biggest excrescence.”

Magical fireworks rattled the treetops below us. Some were undoubtedly being fired by children, as they were getting entirely too close to the sleigh to be coincidental.

I could make out that cheerfully creepy carnival music floating over the scene,  nameless tunes that were so beloved by horror and teen romance directors alike.

I noticed one ride where children were encapsulated by giant bubbles and then propelled into the air to join other bubble-captured patrons. These bubbles smacked and bounced happily into one another—like aerial bumper-cars. Behind this ride stood a massive inflatable figure.

The figure reminded me of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man—at first glance. Then, I realized that the enormous, gray-white five-story inflatable humanoid was wearing a deep green elf hat with a bell the size of a beach ball on the end. Two banana boat-sized fangs protruded from its upper lip. Some kind of spell had animated the figure so that it winked periodically down at the crowd and occasionally snorted a rain of glittering gold snow over the throng of carnival goers.

“What the hell is that thing?” I asked as we circled the giant figure.

Enwyn leaned past Mallory and patted me kindly on the knee.