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

Peaky Blinders, “I do declare, but I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me for a second! Fancy seein’ you here again, eh?”

“You’re still up to… this, then?” Leah asked.

Roger made a deprecatory noise in his huge throat. “My parents always said I’d go far. ‘Course, I think they rather hoped I’d stay there too. Miserable gits.”

“I know that feeling,” Leah said. “It’s more often than not that a Chaosbane gets treated like a walking menstrual cramp when they enter a room.”

“Or an alleyway,” Roger pointed out.

“Or an alleyway,” Leah agreed.

Roger’s yellow eyes slid in my direction. They regarded me, as if weighing up whether I’d be worth grabbing by the neck and drowning in the nearest river. “And you brought a little friend. How nice.”

Leah lit one of her black cigarettes. I was almost tempted to ask her for one. The smell of cloves under my nose would have been far preferable to the overwhelming fug of antique cabbage and forgotten gym bags.

“Yes, yes, we’re here to take a trip into the Underbelly, my friend and I,” Leah said cordially, while Roger managed to watch us both simultaneously from his eerie crocodile eyes.

“And what’s your name, sonny jim?” Roger asked me.

“Who wants to know?” I asked in return.

“The guy who decides whether this even is an entrance to the Underbelly,” Roger said through his mouthful of cruel teeth. “The guy who decides whether or not the Underbelly even exists.”

“Justin,” I said. “Justin Mauler.”

“There, that wasn’t so hard now, was it?” Roger said. He turned back to Leah. “All I need now is the password, love.”

Leah reached into the back pocket of her pants and pulled out a small pouch of coins. She tossed it to the crocodile-man who caught it with deft fingers.

“That’s the password?” I asked.

Roger grinned wider at me and picked nonchalantly at his teeth. “Only password that matters when it comes to a place like the Underbelly, bucko.” He stepped aside and pushed the door of the tavern open. “Have a nice trip.”

As I walked past the strange figure, I said, “I’m digging the tophat, buddy. It’s a refined look.”

Roger leered at me, swept off the hat, and revealed a dagger buried in the top of his head. It was stuck about two inches into the thick bone of his crocodile’s skull. Looked like it had been stuck there a good while.

“Thanks kindly, chum,” he said. “It’s a bit less intrusive than the alternative, ain’t it?”

“Hell of an ice-breaker though,” I said, trying not to stare too much at the knife in the dude’s dome.

“Not in the Underbelly, bucko,” the crocodile-man said. “It’s worth remembering that beauty might be only skin deep, but ugliness goes all the way clean down to the bone.”

He put on his hat again and waved cheerfully at us as we walked into the dark beneath the door.

There was no tavern inside those double doors of Ye Olde Shite Pipe. The doors opened into a large tunnel that stretched away into blackness. The murk was not total. It was punctuated and dimly lit by green lanterns that grew smaller and smaller as they receded down the tunnel. The smell was truly awful, pungent to the point of being able to taste distinct flavors on the air. They were not good flavors either. After a few minutes though, my nose simply gave up, battened down the hatches, and waited patiently for fresh air.

“This way,” Leah said, and we set off.

The tunnel looked like it delved straight on into the hill at first, but it was not long before the floor gradually rose, sloping upward. We followed it for maybe a mile or more when I heard the sounds of people up ahead. Many people.

The light broadened. The noise grew. It sounded like there was a city square, or the subterranean equivalent, lying just around the next bend in the gradually lightening tunnel.

We emerged out into the light, and my face split into a wide grin.

“Holy shit,” I said, “it’s the fucking Wild West.”

“This isn’t west,” Leah said. “We’re facing north. I think.”

“No, I mean… Never mind.” It was not important. What was important was that we had emerged into a massive underground cavity; a natural cavern in the hill on top of which part of Manafell was built.

Hundreds and hundreds of glowing lanterns illuminated the space. They floated and burned like occult versions of those paper lanterns that get released in Chiang Mai, Thailand whenever it’s a full moon.

My eyes moved upward, and I saw the mouths of several enormous pipes set into the upper reaches of the cavern. A few gushed out brown, turgid water which fell like waterfalls down the side of the subterranean cavern and flowed away like rivers of foul gravy. Others spurted out cleaner-looking water, while one of them was releasing nothing at all.

The Underbelly reminded me a lot of Powder Lane—the magical street which could be accessed through an opening at the back of a specific tavern in Nevermoor. Powder Lane was a haven for students and locals alike, who wished to buy or partake in illegal substances without the Queen’s Law breathing down their necks.

The Underbelly was obviously a place forged in the same mold, though this place was far less refined than Powder Lane. The buildings were all constructed out of repurposed and recycled materials; wood, stone, and metal that might have floated or washed down the sewer pipes.

The main street reminded me vividly of those street towns in Western movies, except here there was a distinct vibe of illegal magic being used and sold.

“Stolen vectors, bootlegged spells, illegal hybrid creature breeders, and smuggling,” Leah said, in answer to my starry-eyed look that I shot at her. “All of these things abound in the Underbelly.”

“How does us