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

Mallory covered her mouth with her hand and said, “Handsome, yes. Could do with a bath though, I think.”

After my battle with the hydrahound, I was far from at full capacity in the mana department, but I had two extremely capable mages standing to either side of me for which I was pretty damned grateful.

It was commonly said that Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, but I was hoping that Mallory and Leah would prove that idiom to be incorrect. Hopefully, the combined wrath of two women out to complete a quest would make the passion they showed at being scorned look like a fucking picnic.

The monster continued to rock and gibber, eyeing us balefully. It looked the part of a monster: mean, scary, grotesque.

Currently though, it was not acting like one.

And if a monster didn’t act like a monster, then was it actually a monster?

I took a few more steps toward it.

“Do you reckon that, just for once, we might be able to actually reason with this thing?” I asked the two female mages. “Do you think that for once, just this once, we might not have to fucking explode something into a glutinous mess just so—”

With an elastic, terrifyingly fast spring, the nightmarish liderc leapt upward and landed with a bone rattling thud in the middle of the courtyard. It was no small jump. Must have been thirty yards. I felt the impact of it landing through my boots. It sent shards and chips of stone in all directions, rattling off the walls and pinging off the statues.

The liderc opened its disgusting, gaping maw and roared out a challenge of unbridled, insane bloodlust.

“Never mind,” I said, and fired a Blazing Bolt at it.

The Blazing Bolt flew across the space between us and the monster, crackling red energy trailing behind it like the tail of a comet. The magical projectile hit the liderc square in its armored chest but ricocheted off. The spell made the liderc cut off its roar and grunt, but it deflected off its breastplate and hit a statue, blowing it to smithereens. Stone fell like rain.

“Plan?” Mallory shot at me as the liderc hissed menacingly.

“Same as usual!” I yelled sprinting left, while Leah went right. “Stay alive!”

“Same as usual,” I heard Mallory repeat. She dove and vanished into the scattering of statues.

The stink of the monster was thick in my nostrils, and I could hear it blithering and snuffling to itself.

“Yoo-hoo!” I heard Leah caw from off to my right.

The Chaos Mage cartwheeled out in front of the liderc and hit it with a spray of her sparkling pink acid. Her Chaos spell bubbled and ate up the armor that adorned the beast, pock-marking its bare gray skin where it touched it and sending little tendrils of steam hissing into the air.

The liderc looked irked, but not much concerned with the attack. It swung a long arm at Leah in retaliation. Leah vaulted nimbly over the scything claws, and they raked the ground where her feet had been, sending sprays of stone chips and dust into the air.

Mallory appeared from behind the liderc just as I sent a few Frost Shards at it. The monster turned to confront the Holy Mage as the two-foot-long icicles shattered across its armored back harmlessly.

Mallory floated into the air and opened her hands wide, her eyes glowing with a white fire.

“Foul creature, be cleansed with Holy Fire!” she said, in a high, cold, terrible voice.

She thrust her hands forward, and a beam of scintillating gold-white flames erupted from her palms.

I had to shield my eyes as the Holy Fire chewed up a strip of stone flags, racing toward the liderc. Before the potent spell could hit our adversary, the liderc sprung away nimbly and landed some yards distant, crashing through a minotaur statue.

Mallory attempted to follow the creature, but the magic she was wielding seemed cumbersome and awkward. The Holy Fire changed course, leaving patches of melted, bubbling stone in its wake and cutting through a statue like a welding torch through metal. However, before the Holy Mage could target the liderc once more, the fire faltered and faded. She dropped heavily to the floor, landing on her feet but staggering a little.

That particularly potent spell, which would doubtless have caused the monster some real problems, had also seriously depleted Mallory’s mana reserves. Her pale face was flushed with effort and shining with perspiration.

I conjured two Crystal Magma Bombs and chucked them toward the liderc before I sprinted over to check on Mallory. The thaumaturgical grenades detonated with twin whumpfs and sprayed viscous magma across the liderc, eating into its armor and burning its gray hide.

“Are you okay?” I asked Mallory, pulling her out of the line of fire as the liderc ripped up a large statue and tossed it at us.

“Y-yes,” the Holy Mage stuttered as the hurled statue crashed down not too far away and cracked into five chunks, each the size of a mini-fridge. “I tried t-to end things early and save us all some effort, b-but I missed. Just give me a moment. I’ll be fine.”

Mallory’s lips were blue, and her teeth chattered, but there wasn’t anything I could do, except keep the liderc’s attention away from her.

So that is what I did.

I ran out, sprinted toward the liderc, at the same that Leah appeared and began peppering it with twirling silvery-pink birds that fluttered out of the ether and shot toward the liderc like bullets.

The liderc narrowed its huge eyes at the storm of silver-pink projectiles and let loose an eerie scream from its slobbering mouth.

It was a roar that could only just be discerned by the human ear, and it set my teeth on edge.