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

demon looked unconcernedly over at the three of us. We had backed away from the apparition as it had torn itself out of the liderc’s body, and we now stood about sixty yards away.

With a choking screech, the demon began to hawk up something from deep inside itself. Its skeletal avian head leaned back on its spindly neck and began jerking backward and forward.

“Please be allergic to oxygen,” I muttered.

With spasmodic jerks, the vulture-like head bobbed forward a couple of times. A ball of burning blue light, wreathed in black flame, spewed out of its mouth and landed with a thud on top of the corpse it had just crawled out of.

I didn’t know how, but I got the impression that the ball of blue light was so cold that touching it would have burned me in reverse. I didn’t know how to explain that feeling to myself, but I was almost positive that would be the case. It reminded me, somehow, of a black hole.

“Oh no,” Mallory said flatly.

“Bad news?” I asked.

“Some of the worst,” Mallory replied.

The blue burning ball instantly consumed the body of the liderc, reducing it to sable ashes before drawing it into itself and expanding from the size of a beach ball to a La-Z-Boy.

“The very worst,” Mallory said, her eyes fixed on the blue ball of dense light.

“You’ve opened up the can, honeybunny,” Leah said, her pale face aglow with sapphire light, “why not spill those beans?”

“It’s a Doomsday Demon,” the Holy Mage said, her head drooping a little as she spoke.

“Sounds promising,” I said drily.

I watched as the expanding ball of blue and black magic or energy, or whatever the fuck it was, continued to expand, shriveling solid rock like it was cardboard and consuming it.

“And what’s with the pretty light?” Leah asked.

“That,” Mallory said wearily, “is an Armageddon Sphere.”

I laughed. Sometimes that’s all you can do. It’s either that or run off screaming with your arms flailing over your head.

“And that will, I presume, bring about some localized end of world event?” I guessed.

Mallory nodded. “That’s right, Justin, it will burst when it reaches its optimal size and obliterate and consume all matter within its radius.”

“I don’t suppose Armageddon Sphere is one of those ironic names, is it?” Leah asked airily.

“What?” Mallory asked.

“One of those, you know, names that means its opposite. Like, this is the Armageddon Sphere because when it explodes it just destroys, say, something as big as a pig?”

Mallory blinked. I guessed she was too exhausted to even roll her eyes.

“I would speculate, from what I have read in texts back in the Celestial Realm, that this blue Armageddon Sphere, when it has reached approximately the same size and mass as a wagon, will detonate and consume an area roughly the size of this castle. It might even take out a decent chunk of Manafell too.”

My jaw dropped. “Why would this be part of the test for someone who is after the third relic?”

“Honestly,” Mallory said, “I don’t think it is. It is something more sinister.”

“Fuck it,” I said. “I’m going to try and take it down then.”

“Tread carefully, Creation Mage,” Mallory cautioned me. “This demon is unlike any foe that you would have faced before. It is no monster. This is something more. This is something of the endless night.”

“Ominous words,” I said, smiling tightly. “My favorite kind. You coming?” This last sentence was shot at Leah.

“Duh,” the female Chaosbane said. “Wouldn’t miss this show for the world.”

Leah and I converged on the malignant Doomsday Demon firing spells like we were Old West gunslingers. There was no point in pussy-footing around. The thing knew we were there, it just seemed not to care.

I aimed to make it care.

Leah hit it with reams of Chaos Magic that spiraled out of her long-fingered hands. At the same time, my staff was pointing at the demon and emitting Blazing Bolt after Blazing Bolt.

The spells splashed against the demon’s shadowy black hide like pebbles plopping into water, disappearing without leaving even the slightest mark behind.

The Doomsday Demon cawed in harsh condescension at our efforts, obviously mocking us even though we could not hope to understand its tongue.

“What the hell?” I said to Leah in frustrated disbelief as we both ducked behind a statue to have a quick head-to-head. “Magic doesn’t hurt it? What the fuck are we supposed to do about that?”

Leah, for once, looked genuinely puzzled. There was a slight frown in the middle of her dark eyes.

“Hand-to-hand?” she said, but her tone told me that she was far from convinced that this was a good idea.

I slinked behind the statue, my back against the cold stone. The demon glared at me, while it crouched over the Armageddon Sphere.

“It doesn’t even look like it’s going to attack us,” I said.

“If I was impervious to magic and was fighting mages,” Leah said with a kind of detached thoughtfulness, “I wouldn’t stir my ass to fight either. I’d just wait for that glowing egg thing to go off and—pop! Everyone dies.”

That was what it was doing, wasn’t it? Goddamn it, it was just waiting us out, while we ran around like a couple of idiots trying to kill it with magic that could do it no harm.

“It’s a head-scratcher,” Leah said mildly. “How do you kill something that is more myth than living being?”

“I’ve got a plan. Sort of,” I said.

I darted out of hiding and stood my ground in the middle of the destruction that had been caused by the fight with the liderc. Using my rapidly depleting mana, I summoned my Lightning Skink and a pack of Undead Wolverines. I followed it up with a Rain of Toads spell, hoping that an onslaught of amphibians of plague-like