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

tinsel snaked across buildings like glittering anacondas for an entire city block, occasionally snapping at passing white-feathered doves.

When we reached the end of the steep street, Leah turned us left. We made our way through a district with shops that sold books and scrolls. There were a few drinking establishments and restaurants, but none was doing much of a trade at this time in the morning.

There was a brief moment, as we walked past one uniquely rowdy bar, when I thought of maybe summoning my black crystal staff. Two centaurs came charging out of the swinging cowboy saloon style doors and began squaring off to one another in the street. They were big, burly creatures and were clearly filled to the molars with rotgut, for they were yelling at each other in what I thought was a foreign tongue, until I realized that they were just so drunk they were almost unintelligible.

“Ahhhhh, you’re a horse’s ass, Kadol!” a centaur with a mullet of long red hair and a series of prison tattoos up his arms yelled at the other.

The other centaur, Kadol, frowned. He removed the cigar he was smoking from between his lips and looked behind him at his black swishing tail. “What’re ye on about, ye daft scrote, we’re all of us horses’ asses, ain’t we?”

We left the two arguing centaurs behind us and carried on our way. The street that we were on was quite quiet compared to the crescent piazza below us. It slowly evolved into the sort of large, empty boutique shops in which nothing had a price tag. Large trolls stood at the doors as bouncers. Every single one of the trolls regarded Leah and me with the same implacable, stony bouncer’s stare that said, “You and I will get along just fine so long as you don’t embarrass yourselves by coming over here and trying to get into this shop.”

Eventually, we turned a corner into the middle of a great parade ground. To our right and ahead of us was a building that could only be the Castle of Ascendance.

It was a massive palatial structure that I had glimpsed from the sleigh. I had also seen the rear of stunning edifice from the Chaosbane’s ranch. This was clearly the front entrance. It couldn’t have been grander or more divine if it had been carved out of a golden nugget and had Charlize Theron working as the porter.

Walls of gleaming marble stretched out from either side of a gate that was so intricately worked that, for a few moments, I thought it was constructed of light made solid.

“That’s the front door?” I asked.

“Yep,” Leah said.

“That gate looks like it’s made of light.”

“It’s powered by pure magic, constrained through some very artful devices, blah blah blah, or so Reggie was trying to tell me before I kicked him in the shin because he was being so dull.”

“Sounds… tricky and impressive,” I said.

Leah magicked one of her black cigarettes from out of nowhere and lit it with a gentle word.

“Oh yeah,” she said. “Very tricky. You try and run through that and you’ll be sliced into lots of pretty shapes.” She drew on her cigarette, and the burning tip reflected in her dark eyes, turning them to orbs of burning coal. “Then, I’ve heard, they feed you to the hellhounds.”

My gaze flicked up and down the boulevard.

There were soldiers everywhere, standing guard and on high alert. About ninety-nine percent of them were looking in our direction.

“Is this the way that people normally come looking for people in the castle?” I asked as Leah stepped out and began ambling down the promenade.

Leah giggled and nudged me with her elbow.

“Don’t be silly! Did you take a spill and smack your peanut when I wasn’t looking? No one comes knocking on the front door!” she said.

I looked ahead at the looming gate and the small squad of soldiers starting to assemble in front of it.

“Oh good,” I said, my tone somewhat sarcastic.

When we were within twenty yards of the beautiful golden gate, one of the soldiers stepped out from the rank of a dozen. He held up a hand. Half a dozen of the soldiers behind him raised their crossbows to their shoulders.

Of course, in kingdoms like Avalonia, there were always little skirmishes, border wars, and fights breaking out. These head-to-heads were not always fought solely with magic. There were plenty of regular soldiers in Queen Hagatha’s armies who possessed no magical abilities whatsoever. Hand to hand combat was a popular method of resolving problems because, callous as it sounded, often the Queen could afford to lose a legion of foot soldiers better than she could afford to lose a single War Mage.

The points of the crossbow quarrels glinted fitfully in the sporadic sunlight filtering down from the cloudy sky. They were mean-looking weapons. I did not much relish staring down the business end of them, even if I could use magic.

I knew from my time at the Academy that crossbows were formidable little handfuls of tightly strung death. In lectures, I had listened with rapt attention while a tutor explained the difference between longbows and crossbows. Trained longbowmen could shoot two to five times more frequently in a given time than a crossbowman, but a crossbow could be effectively used by an untrained person with the IQ of your average politician. What was more, like a longbow, crossbows could fling their projectiles toward a target at around one-hundred and thirty-five feet per second.

That was plenty fast enough to cause even Leah Chaosbane some problems, I imagined.

The faces of the soldiers aiming the crossbows bore the cool, placid demeanors of six people who would quite happily turn Leah and myself into Swiss cheese should we do anything rash or foolish. I figured they would be quite happy to stay here pointing