Metal Mage 7 Read online

  Chapter 1

  I left Qiran and Dragir to argue over the elven scrolls and headed for the path at the base of the cliff.

  Dragir was determined to get the ancient scrolls back from his father’s clutches, and it was probably best I left him to the task, since I was about ten seconds away from burying my fist in Qiran’s face.

  After the battle against the Master’s army, we’d found the head of House Quyn deep within the chambers of the hidden fortress beside the sea, and the moment we’d entered, he gathered every slip of parchment up and refused to hand any of them over.

  Qiran was now wholly dedicated to guarding the scrolls from everyone apparently. Including me.

  Dragir hadn’t seemed very surprised about this, and I guess I wasn’t either. Qiran was an elf, after all.

  So, I figured I could trust the son to handle his father’s childishness, but if he didn’t have the elven scrolls back by the time I returned from gathering the wares of the battle, I’d just have to lock the old elf in stone until he agreed to give them up. I wasn’t above it.

  The four women had made their way down the jetty the moment Shoshanne arrived from the village, and Deya had them perched around her on the rocky embankment to await the return of the sea dragons now.

  I took a last admiring glance at the four gorgeous women bathing in the sun, and the murmur of Deya’s silvery voice carried on the salty breeze while she spoke to the others about her ancestors’ livelihood here.

  Any other day, I would have joined them in a heartbeat, but I didn’t have the patience to sit still for another moment. So, I turned away and carefully climbed along the cliff face to return to House Quyn.

  Qiran’s possessiveness had caught me off guard, but more importantly, my holster was still empty after the heir to House Kylen had kicked my revolver out of my hand. Until the gun was safely stowed at my hip, I couldn’t seem to relax by even a degree. The last thing I needed was one of the Master’s minions getting a hold of a weapon like that.

  Or worse, the Master himself.

  I quickened my pace at the thought, but I was forced to slow down not far into the jungle when I came to the grove of thorns. Foaming at the mouth for weeks on end would more than hinder my plans, so I wove cautiously between the stocky vines to avoid the long and technicolored thorns jutting out from every direction.

  The women and children of House Quyn’s army had worn a small footpath in the moss, and I was able to make it to safer terrain in less time by following their trail. They’d returned to their village only an hour before, and it seemed they’d fared well in the grove with the guards and their dogs to lead them.

  I decided to bypass the village itself, though, so not another minute could be wasted. The jungle shifted from broad and exotic leaves to the stout blue foliage that encroached all around House Quyn, and after I’d walked for a little while, I came out of the hidden forest not far from the crystal bridge.

  The first thing I noticed was the pungent stench of the corpses still littering the jungle, and the remnants of charred plants mingled just beneath it. The pale pink crystals of the bridge were smeared with blood, but as I nudged a dead elf over the ledge and into the water, I could see the overspray from the raging river below was slowly diluting the mess.

  I couldn’t say the same for Bobbie, unfortunately.

  I found the Mustang returned to her spot beneath the ferns with a decapitated head wedged in her front wheel well, and there were several dents all over the hood where other skulls had cracked open upon impact. Her glass was smeared with dark red blood, but luckily it was still in one piece, and I grimaced as I stooped to check the interior.

  Somehow, the black velvet cushions we’d stolen from House Aelin had managed to escape the onslaught, and Stan was content as ever while he lounged on the steering wheel like it was a hammock.

  The second he saw me, he gave a start, pulled himself upright, and jumped down to the cushions to join me at the door.

  I smirked. “So, were you in charge of driving or … ?” I asked him as he climbed onto my palm.

  Stan shook his head and turned to give Bobbie an appreciative look.

  I nodded. “Yeah, she’s a hell of a car, isn’t she? Word has it, she’s made more than an impression with the elves.”

  Stan shrugged like he wasn’t remotely surprised, and I chuckled as I set him down in the damp dirt to stretch his legs a bit.

  Then I took a turn around the Mustang to take stock of the damage.

  Overall, the full steel assembly had held up well, but as proud as I was about the car’s efforts in the battle, I wasn’t crazy about the new paint job. Elven blood and guts really took away from the class of the ’67 model.

  I raised my palms and decided to even out the dings in the hood and fenders first, and then I let the car back its way closer to the base of the towering waterfall.

  The stray head needed a good few kicks to free it from the wheel well, but once the Mustang was settled closer to the water, I posted myself against a trunk while the overspray slowly trickled across the steel surface. The stench of the corpses was masked better by the dank air of the jungle over here, and the blood and innards gradually softened until they began to drip to the ground.

  Eventually, Bobbie 3.0 was glistening with the same sandblasted finish I’d given her the day before, and no one would guess she’d mowed down nearly two dozen elves for us.

  Although it could have been more. The guards from House Quyn still hadn’t come to any decisive number.

  “Looking damn good,” I assured the Mustang with a solid pat, and the engine gave a low growl as I climbed into the driver’s seat.

  Stan sprinted over from a small patch of mushrooms he’d been bouncing around on, and I scooped him up to place him on the dashboard.

  We drove into the battlefield until the crunching of the corpses was too gross to continue, and I climbed out to get a look at what was left of the place.

  In the daylight, the ferns in the north were mottled all over with blood, and much of the undergrowth was either trampled or made up entirely of the bodies of the Master’s army.

  To the south, the wasteland left behind by the fire stretched far in a blanket of ash, but the trees with their bark charred midway up held strong as the canopy continued to sway gently above.

  The heat of the day at this hour had begun to rot the bodies rather quickly, and I breathed through my mouth while I rounded the back of the Mustang to soften the seam of Bobbie’s trunk. There was more than enough room in there for a decent restock, so I climbed up to the hood of the car and scanned the fallen soldiers strewn in the jungle around me.

  Then I summoned my magic, and a metallic spark sifted through my veins before it began to pulse with the beat of my heart. Around me, several ferns rustled, and axes, swords, daggers and glaives pulled themselves out of their victims or the dirt where they’d been dropped.

  Slowly, more weapons rose all over the decimated forest, and the magnetic pull of my powers brought each of them straight to me before I filed them into the Mustang’s trunk. I carefully eyed every weapon that passed in the hopes a revolver would suddenly drift by, but even after half the wares were gone through, no gun had appeared.

  I tried not to panic just yet, but I couldn’t help it. The revolver always came right to me when I called it, and somehow, the night before, I couldn’t even sense it nearby when I’d tried to summon it. I didn’t regret abandoning my search to free House Fehryn’s warriors from the raging fire, but now I was determined not to leave the vicinity until the revolver was firmly stowed in my holster again.

  Bobbie’s backend began to sag under the weight of all the weapons I’d collected so far, so I decided to store the rest of the wares in a pile near the hidden path to House Q
uyn. Dragir would no doubt appreciate the addition to his personal collection.

  There were only about a dozen Halcyan blades that came to me from the battlefield, but I carefully lined these beside the pile as well where they wouldn’t be crushed by the weight of any tungsten axe. These blades must have been from the very few elves who had been lost to the battle, and it only seemed appropriate they should be returned to the elf who’d forged them to begin with.

  Once the weapons were all gathered and sorted, I summoned what I could of the armor from House Syru’s soldiers and left this at the head of the path as well for Dragir to melt down and do with what he liked. Then I resealed Bobbie’s trunk and sent her to wait beside the crystal bridge while I made my way out amongst the corpses.

  I tried not to look at the bluing flesh of the dead if I could help it, but the stench was so acrid now, it was impossible to ignore the scene entirely. Smashed in skulls and torn entrails buzzed with giant jungle flies, and I saw several wriggling mounds of what looked like maggots, except they were a blistering orange with beady green eyes and about as big as my thumb.

  Sooner than I would have liked, I discovered these guys also oozed a pukish yellow substance when stepped on.

  I cringed and swiped my boot on the base of a bloody fern while I continued through the jungle, and I kept my magic drifting all across the bodies as I went.

  Bobbie was long gone from sight when I stopped and turned in a circle to get my bearings.

  It had been impossible to see much of anything the night before, but I felt like I wasn’t far off from where I’d lost the revolver now, and after weaving around a few more ferns, I came to a place I recognized without question.

  The elves whose blood had been boiled at the hand of Dragir were still splayed in the small clearing, and in broad daylight, the claw marks were hard to miss. One of the elves had even managed to hook his lower lip, and his entire jaw was torn open straight down to his collarbone.

  I looked away before any more details could jump out at me, and I decided to double down on my probing of this area since it was the last place I had the revolver. Three passes later, I thought I’d maybe sensed something a little ways to the north, and I carefully stepped over a mound of maggots to scour the next area.

  Bugs buzzed noisily all around me, and I swatted them away while I tried to focus on the information my magic was sending back to me. I was stooped low to the ground with my palms outstretched when a breeze suddenly picked up, and a swarm of bugs took flight straight into my face. Their pebbly bodies bounced off my arms and face while they coursed past, and I pinched my eyes shut until they’d cleared enough for me to see the terrain again.

  When I opened my eyes, the buzzing of the jungle had been replaced with silence, and I moved ahead to scan the next plot of land.

  Then my eyes glanced over a talon on the other side of a fern, and I continued to find three more talons extended from a massive four-pronged foot.

  I froze where I stood, and after a moment of staring at the gleaming tip of each deadly point, a bluish arm suddenly dropped from the sky and landed beside me.

  It had clearly been torn off an already dead corpse, but I had a feeling I didn’t want to know what had done it. There was at least a small chance whatever it was hadn’t noticed me beneath the giant ferns just yet, and if I remained perfectly still, the owner of the talons might pass on.

  After a long moment of nothing, my curiosity got the better of me though, and I carefully raised my chin to follow the foot upward.

  The legs were knobby, but easily thicker than my own, and the feathers began around the underbelly. They were the dense black of a raven’s, and stout rather than downy, but the fact that they were each longer than my arm was probably a bad sign. By the time I made it past the jutting bones of the folded wings, I knew I was fucked.

  I’d seen vultures and condors back on earth, but this beast put them to shame. The others had been unsightly at best. This guy was grotesque to the point of putrid, and it was larger than any bird I’d ever imagined. Its bald and stubbly neck wrinkled in deep purple folds where the feathers ended at the shoulders, and there were at least three shades of mold blooming ravenously in the deeper crevices of its skin.

  Just above, the scavenging eyes of the massive bird were trained directly on me. The eyes were stark yellow with double eyelids that blinked a ghoulish green every few seconds, and in the hooked beak, a corpse hung limp and dripped with sluggish blood.

  Then the beast tightened its hold, and one of the elf’s legs was spliced off.

  It dropped to the ground as well, and the moment it landed, the animal twisted its beak upward toward the sky to swallow the body down with a sharp snip.

  I took a single step back while the rotten folds of its neck undulated, but the yellow eyes darted to the movement immediately, and I froze once again.

  With a steadying breath, I shifted my focus, and just as the bird snapped its beak in warning, I sent out a wave of Terra magic to tear the ground open beneath the massive talons.

  The bird was faster than me, though, and as it spread its jet-black wings in a flash while its talons clawed out for me, I dove behind a crop of ferns.

  Despite the beating of the heavy wings that sent ash up all over the place, the beast was practically silent as it hovered above the plants and searched for me in the brush.

  I crouched lower while the wind threw the fronds back and forth, and just as I caught sight of the beast’s ghoulish lids blinking down at me, it dove.

  I lunged and rolled over a few dead elves to hide in a dense patch of leaves, but I felt the tip of the hooked beak graze the back of my leg for a split second.

  Another sharp snip of the beak cut half of my coverage away, and I was forced from my hiding place again by the scavenger’s ear-shattering screech.

  I took off at a sprint and leapt over bodies and felled logs as I tried to lose the massive bird, but the ash in the air began to thicken with the beating of the wings, and my eyes began to burn from it.

  The next two ferns I hid under were wrenched clean out of the dirt, and I decided to send the ground up to try and lock the feet if I could.

  Every pillar I sent up only startled the beast and forced him to rise higher into the air, but then he dove at a ridiculous speed, and I skidded over a boulder and into another pile of bodies.

  The talons crashed to the earth with a sickening, squishing, sound from the maggots beneath, and when I lurched backward, my hand sank into the entrails of an elf.

  I scrambled to find my footing as my palm slipped deeper, and my boots slicked with maggot juice without finding any hold. My magic sent three pillars with deadly points shooting up to try and pierce the belly of the bird, but the beast quickly took flight with another piercing screech.

  I watched the bird circle high against the canopy, and he had a wingspan that must have been as wide as the entire main house of House Quyn. All the while, it kept its talons poised to snatch me from the ground, and I’d just managed to dig my hand free when the creature began to dive again.

  My powers sparked in desperation as I scanned feverishly for any weapon I might have missed, but nothing came to my summons, and I didn’t dare call Bobbie. The damn bird honestly could have carried her and I both off.

  The raging river echoed not too far off though, and I decided to try and make a break for it one last time.

  I sent two more pillars up as I dove between the ferns, but after I’d made it halfway to the crystal bridge, my foot caught on a stiffened arm, and I flew face first into a rotting corpse. The face was a sickly gray and twisted in agony, and I abruptly flipped onto my back to find the bird’s talons clutching greedily only feet above me.

  The stark yellow eyes narrowed in on my body, and as my arms sprang out to pull a wall over myself, a shot suddenly fired.

  I broke the wall apart as the bird let out a guttural screech, and I saw the wings begin to flail while blood seeped down its stubbly temple.

&
nbsp; My heart pounded as the beast fought to keep flight, and as its girth wavered on the brink of crushing me, I lurched once more in panic, and another shot fired.

  The beast was thrown into the ferns by the second bullet, and its talons twitched violently as the gurgle in its throat slowly faded.

  I remained splayed across the rotted elf as I stared at the dead beast not ten feet away. Then I whipped my head around to find who’d fired the gun.

  There was nothing in this realm that sounded so familiar to me as my revolver, and I’d recognized it the moment the first shot went off.

  It had to be somewhere close by, but not knowing who’d pulled the trigger kept me where I was.

  Without moving a muscle, I sent my magic into the jungle around me, and still, I sensed nothing that resembled my gun. I furrowed my brow and propped myself up to sit as my frustration grew, and after I’d listened long enough to be almost sure no one was near, I carefully stood and craned my neck over the ferns.

  As far as I could see, I was the only living creature in a wilderness of death, and I turned back to eye the motionless scavenger behind me. When I came closer, I could tell the bullet holes in its head were fired from the north, so I slowly made my way across the bodies in this direction. The buzz of the bugs returned after a short while, but nothing besides these and the maggots moved around me.

  I came to a stop after I’d walked for a while with no indication of where the shot had come from, and I furrowed my brow once more while I thought back.

  I’d gotten a peculiar sensation in my chest immediately before the bird was hit. Everyone had always said my life would flash before my eyes if I was about to die, but when I looked up at the massive bird and sent my arms up to block the blow of its beak, nothing like that happened.

  My mind was crystal clear, in fact, except for the odd sensation that my powers had suddenly split, and half of my focus had been fully engaged just as the shot went off.

  Remnants of the sensations still fluttered lightly in my chest, and I closed my eyes to ease into this. To my surprise, I realized I could taste metal on my tongue as I did, and something that reminded me of sulphur lingered in the back of my nose.