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

on, you,” she said enthusiastically, “let’s get tooled up. We don’t want to get lumbered with the shitty thundercusses, do we?”

“I don’t know,” I said as I was dragged out of the room and down a hallway. “Do we? What the shit is a thundercuss?”

Chapter 7

Our group of ten was dressed in striking matching outfits: long robes over warm trousers tucked into our boots, warm woolen mittens, and the types of deer stalking hats made famous by Sherlock Holmes. All in a lurid, safety-orange color.

When I had asked whether the color was to protect us all from accidentally popping one another if we got separated, Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock had looked at me seriously and said, “Gods no, boyo, it’s because those little devils, the Eggnog Gnomes, can’t see this shade of orange for some reason. Means we can nail more of the pests before they can figure out where the fire is coming from!”

“So, you meant a blunderbuss?” I said to Leah as we walked across the untouched snow of the lawns, our footsteps the first things to mar the surface that day.

“I don’t know what you’re going on about with all your talk of blunderbusses,” Leah said, “but what you’re holding there is a thundercuss, a weapon of Chaosbane design that is only brandished to do humane battle against the Eggnog Gnomes.”

I turned the formidable-looking weapon over in my hands. It certainly looked like a blunderbuss, almost exactly like one. The device had a stock that could have been taken straight off the most expensive bespoke Purdey & Sons shotgun, all beautiful hand carvings and intricate etchings. The part of the thundercuss that passed for a barrel looked more like a brass instrument of some kind, a trombone possibly, or the horn from a gramophone.

“This is a Chaosbane design?” I asked.

“That’s correct, Justin,” Mort said quietly from behind me.

I almost jumped; the guy was just so quiet that you literally never heard him coming. No wonder he was one of the best and most infamous bounty hunters in Avalonia.

“It’s not going to explode in my face, is it?” I asked, only half-jokingly.

“Ye of little faith,” Leah scolded me theatrically. “You should know by now that genius lies along the edge of lunacy, honey-kitten.”

I had to smile at that. I didn’t think a truer description could have been given about any one of the Chaosbanes.

“Okay,” I said, “I trust you, so tell me how to work it and why we’re using these things instead of magic.”

“There would be no challenge, no honor, in using magic to pluck the Eggnog Gnomes from the sky,” Mort said.

“From the sky?” I asked.

Mort frowned slightly and stroked one long, pale finger down a wispy blonde-white sideburn.

“Of course, Eggnog Gnomes are tree-dwellers, Justin,” he said. “As the elder Chaosbane, Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock rouses them from their nests with the Hoodwinking Horn. Being nosy creatures, the Eggnog Gnomes exit the trees, gliding between their little hideouts on membranes of hide that are attached from their elbows to their ankles.”

I made a face. “They fly? I thought we’d be lying up by the lakeside somewhere, waiting for them to come down to do a spot of fishing while they sat on a toadstool or… something.”

Mort was looking at me as if I had gone completely bonkers.

“No,” he said simply.

Leah tapped the little sack of powder that hung at my belt. “Take a handful of blasting powder, drop it down the barrel, point and fire.”

“And this blasting powder just kills them, does it?” I asked.

“No, no, no, no, mate,” Reginald said, slowing down when he overheard the conversation Leah, Mort, and I were having. “Yuletide is not the time to go around killing things now, is it?”

“There’s the whole rest of the year for that,” Mort said soberly.

“Quite,” agreed Reginald. “No, the powder, along with the subtle spell that imbues the inside of each barrel, if it hits, simply sterilizes the Eggnog Gnome.”

“You blow its bits off?” I asked, shocked.

“Good grief, Mr. Mauler, I admit that I have made more than one morally skewed decision in my life,” the Headmaster said, “but as far as shooting the bollocks off random woodland creatures goes. That, sir, is where I draw the line!”

“The gnome is unconscious for a short time,” Mort explained in his calm, slightly eerie voice. “While they are insensate, the powder and spell render them unable to produce more young. They can still…” the pale bounty hunter turned a slight shade of pink and tailed off.

“They can still make twenty toes, is what my bashful cousin means,” Leah said, magicking a black cigarette out of thin air, sticking it between her teeth, and lighting it with a prod of her pinky. “The thundercusses don’t stop that. The Chaosbanes might be maniacs, but we’re not monsters.”

We continued onward, into the heart of a thick belt of woodland behind the house. The sun was still only a finger’s breadth over the eastern horizon when I lost sight of it. We found ourselves encircled by evergreen trees that looked like they had been young when the dinosaurs had been roaming the land—if there had ever been such things as dinosaurs on a world which still hosted dragons.

The smell of pinewoods relaxed my mind. They smelled of life, although life that was dormant and sleepy and brooding. The pine needles above, which made up the roof of this many pillared arboreal hall, kept out the worst of the snow and all but the most insidious breezes. The pine needles underfoot deadened all sound and muted our footfalls.

I fell in next to Enwyn as Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock led the way through the trees. Evidently, the old-timer had a specific spot in mind because he pushed along without hesitation even though I could not discern any visible path.