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

The dragon roared with glee, knocking aside the Armageddon Sphere with apparent impunity so it could jump on the shocked Doomsday Demon.

It was a true clash of the titans, the coming together of those two big, magical entities. Stone cracked and the hoarfrost that covered basically everything dissolved under the Amber Dragon’s hot scales.

As the two huge creatures wrestled and batted at one another, making the courtyard tremble and shake with every blow, Leah came to join me in the metaphorical front row.

“What did you do about the door?” I asked, not taking my eyes off the epic contest taking place in front of us.

“Set up a portal,” Leah said absently. She winced as the Doomsday Demon lashed out with a cold skeletal hand and scored the dragon three long black gashes across its snout. The wounds smoked with the fervor of liquid nitrogen, and the Amber Dragon bellowed in pain.

“A portal?” I asked as the dragon tail-whipped the Doomsday Demon and sent it crashing through a series of quite fresh-looking statues. “Where does the portal take them?”

“Back to the bottom of the stairs,” she said.

I snorted. “Annoying.”

“Very,” Leah agreed.

The Doomsday Demon flapped upward, but it could barely manage because of the amber goo clinging to its skeletal insubstantial sides. The dragon reared up on its hind legs, following it, while the Doomsday Demon beat at its head with claws and wings.

The Amber Dragon, staunch and smelling victory, ignored the blows. It grabbed the slightly smaller nightmare creature and pulled it back down to earth. The move, the grapple, looked slow and ponderous because the two beasts were so big. However, the impact when they hit the courtyard was so massive that it knocked Leah and me off our feet.

Rolling over and squinting against the cataclysmic dust cloud that was pushed out by the collision of such huge bodies hitting the deck, I saw that the dragon had the Doomsday Demon pinned under his vast bulk.

“Go on, finish him!” I managed to choke out, through a mouth that was full of dust.

The dragon reared its neck, opened its mouth, and spewed a torrent of amber slush all over the Doomsday Demon. The awful, skeletal creature flapped and struggled, but whatever power it had left and whatever its demonic flesh was knit from, it could not stand up to the raw power and unconquerable pride of the ancient dragon.

The amber goo was piled on and, even while it was covering its prey, the dragon began to rend and crush the Doomsday Demon under its massive body and powerful claws.

It was amazing to watch—something of such potent fear and terrible potential reduced to wisps of nothing. I figured that was the thing about nightmares; they were terrifying and paralyzingly real right up until they weren’t.

Within minutes, the dragon had completely destroyed the Doomsday Demon, as well as most of the courtyard.

I took a deep breath and hauled myself out of the rubble that I had been unaware I had been lying in, so engrossed had I been in the fight. I reached down and helped Leah to her feet.

“It’s not over yet,” I said before Leah could say a word to me.

“No,” the Chaos Mage said. “We’ve still got to go and dump the trash.”

The Armageddon Sphere was still glowing bright blue. Black flames flickered over its bulging surface, which was no longer a steady cobalt but pulsated.

I had hoped the object would vanish along with the demon that had created it, but I guess that would have been too much to ask for.

“Go and get Mallory,” I said. “Then meet me back here.”

Leah hurried off. There was, or so I had heard, a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted. There was also a time for smart-ass comments, but this, seemingly, was not that time.

I turned my attention to the dragon.

“I enjoyed your work,” I said in a loud voice, “but we have one little job left to do.”

The Amber Dragon gave me a stony look.

I willed a mental image of what I was going to need the huge beast to do into the dragon’s head. The Amber Dragon let out a snort, which was most definitely a sigh.

“Come on, pal,” I said. “You’re on my side now, remember?”

Leah and Mallory arrived on the scene just as I was climbing onto the dragon’s broad back.

“Get up here,” I said. “We need to find a safe place to dump this ticking time bomb, but I can’t leave you here to face the wrath of the Queen. Otherwise, I’d do this alone.”

“How chivalrous,” Leah said, sketching a mocking bow and sticking her tongue out at me.

Mallory tossed something up to me.

It was a stick of silver sealing wax bound to a seal. I looked at the bottom of the seal and saw that it depicted a pair of crossed quills. I looked at the Mallory in puzzlement.

“The third relic,” she explained.

I stowed the innocuous relic away in the pocket that held the bottle of red ink. I had been so caught up with defeating the monster and the demon that I had almost forgotten the reason we had gone to all this trouble in the first place.

“Okay,” I said, holding out a hand for Leah and helping her up into the space between the Amber Dragon’s wing joints in front of me, “time to fly.”

“One moment,” the Holy Mage said.

She swirled her hands in a broad circle and enveloped the Armageddon Sphere in a similar cloudy spell as the one she had used to subdue the dwarf guard earlier in the Chamber of Lock and Key.

“That will buy us a