Metal Mage 9

  Chapter 1

  “Imagine you fall asleep like any other day, and when you wake up again, you’re not in your world anymore,” I tried, and my women’s brows all furrowed in unison. “Instead, you’re floating in space, with hundreds of galaxies spiraling all around you and stretching infinitely in every direction. You can see supernovae bursting and stars being reborn while comets drift by on either side, and you’re entirely weightless, just watching the universe unfold.”

  “What are supernovae?” Deya asked, and she mispronounced the word a bit.

  “A supernova is basically when a star does what my rockets do,” I explained. “It gets incredibly bright as the mass of the star explodes outward enough to counter its own gravity.”

  Deya nodded slowly as her pink eyebrows only furrowed deeper.

  “So, you’re in between worlds now,” I continued. “Not on a planet, but in space, and right in front of you, is Nemris.” A hazy smile came to my face at the recollection of the beautiful goddess, and Cayla smirked like she recognized what that look meant. “Nemris is floating too, but she’s so close you could easily reach out and touch her, and she’s just ridiculously gorgeous. Her hair is long and glittering like strands of silver dust, and her eyes actually mirror the galaxies around you and glow this incredibly vibrant shade of violet, and her dress is cut so low and so sheer you can see every--”

  Aurora cleared her throat.

  “But that’s not the point,” I mumbled, “the point is you’re looking at the goddess herself, and she tells you … well, she said many things at the time … and eventually she says you can choose any realm to enter into and leave your past life behind. You won’t start over as an infant, though, you’ll be exactly you as you are now.”

  “How does someone just choose one of these realms, though?” Shoshanne asked in confusion. “If you don’t even know what they are how can you--”

  “Well, she has them all there,” I explained, and I mapped it out in the air to try and clarify. “With a wave of her hand, these portals appear, like oval windows floating in front of you. And within each portal, you can see every kind of world you can imagine. Most of them are places you couldn’t even imagine, really, and Nemris tells you to choose one--”

  “Wait a minute,” Cayla interrupted, and she narrowed her icy blue eyes. “You told us you were specifically sent here by Nemris to help our world, but now you say you could choose?”

  I shrugged noncommittally. “I was sent here, in a way. Nemris narrowed down the options to three portals, and she said I could choose one, but if we’re splitting hairs, I really didn’t have a choice. Nemris knew that as much as I did.”

  “What do you mean?” Deya asked. “Are you saying Nemris tricked you into choosing our window?”

  “I kind of feel like she did, yeah,” I chuckled, “but I’m definitely not complaining, the woman knows me well. She just showed me Aurora, and I mean … what fucking idiot sees Aurora and doesn’t choose that realm? She’s …”

  I glanced at my half-elf as she cocked a blue brow in my direction, and I eyed the taut silk bodice clinging to every well-honed curve while her stockinged legs draped seductively along the edge of the fountain.

  There were no words to describe how I felt the first time I saw the Ignis Mage running through the forest with a nasty drake snarling at her heels, but the image somehow couldn’t even hold a candle to the months I’d spent battling the Master’s forces with Aurora at my side. She was fierce and frisky like no one I’d ever encountered in this world or the last, and her emerald eyes sparkled with amusement the longer I admired her. Long blue hair tumbled over her shoulders while her pointed ears peeked out between a few haphazard braids, and the fact that she was toying with a flame between her fingertips made my body temperature suddenly spike.

  Then I realized I’d been openly raking my eyes across every curve and tuck of the half-elf’s flawless form for well over a minute now, and I abruptly cleared my throat.

  “Anyways! Like I was saying, it looked like I had a choice, but Nemris knew damn well what portal I would choose and when I chose, she told me this world needed my help. So, I vowed to do anything I could to protect it, and here I am.”

  I gestured to the racks of weapons surrounding us in my workshop, and Haragh grunted from where he stood posted in the corner. The deep crease between his brows was somewhat skeptical, but mostly he looked ready to tear someone’s head off their shoulders, and I couldn’t blame him.

  Only thirty minutes ago, my half-ogre friend found out the Master was enslaving the ogres and branding them with his possessive rune to add them to his growing army of minions, and I could tell this was occupying most of Haragh’s focus.

  I couldn’t keep side-stepping my women, though, and with the Master gaining power by the minute, it seemed trivial to put off my confession any longer. It was past time I told Shoshanne and Deya about who I really was, where I’d come from, and why I was determined to destroy the Master once and for all.

  So, when Shoshanne continued pressing the subject, I did my best to simplify and cut straight to the point for the sake of moving on to the next task without any loose ends.

  Still, Haragh was a hulking and furious cloud in the corner throughout the conversation, and every glance in his direction made me feel more and more anxious. He was my best friend, and if his race had been targeted by the Master, I owed it to him to do everything I could about it.

  But if hearing I was from another world hadn’t cooled his temper at all, there was clearly a hell of a lot to be said about the ogres, so I swallowed the uneasy lump in my throat for the tenth time and tried to focus on tackling one thing at a time. The sooner my women were at ease, the sooner I could address the furious ogre in the room.

  “I do not know, Mason,” Deya sighed as she shook her head, and a stray strand of pink hair fell across her cheek. “You say all of this, but I truly don’t know what to think. Nemris has watched over my family for centuries, and I feel I have an intimate connection to her. You say she tricked you, but the goddess Nemris is not a trickster. I know this. She’s not like the gods Rekekis or Talous, she’s level headed and just. She is the goddess of peace and transition, and I cannot imagine she would ever lure a man as honorable as you out of his home world and trick him into another. Why would she do something like this? And why would she choose to trick you?”

  I smirked and looked down, but Cayla let out a low chuckle.

  “Perhaps Nemris misbehaves once in a while, for Mason’s sake,” Cayla muttered. “I can acknowledge it’s hard to resist misbehaving on his account.”

  Deya’s violet eyes widened like she was scandalized at the suggestion, and she studied me carefully for a response.

  “Yeahhh … ” I sighed as I scruffed the back of my neck, “I’ve actually known Nemris for a while, apparently. At least a few lifetimes, although I can’t remember all of them clearly. She showed me some brief scenes of my past once, though, and there have been a couple incidents that made it pretty clear we’ve uh … known one another. So, yeah, she’s got a bit of a quirky personality once you get to know her more intimately. Who doesn’t? This doesn’t mean she isn’t level headed, or just, or any of the things you’ve come to understand about her, Deya. It’s only that she’s a bit … mischievous when she’s got something specific in mind.”

  “Intimately?” Deya clarified as her cheeks turned pink.

  “Uhh, yeah,” I said. “That’s a minor detail, but more importantly, she wanted me here to take care of a couple personal favors and to protect the realm from the Master, and that’s what I’m doing. Now that’s all out on the table, and we can move on, yeah?”

  “But technically,” Shoshanne said thoughtfully, “it wasn’t Nemris who brought you here then.
Maybe Nemris trusted you to take care of these things, but you said yourself you chose this realm because of Aurora. You saw her and wanted to be with her so badly you decided to risk living in a world you’d never imagined, even though it was on the verge of destruction. You came to this realm for Aurora.”

  “Well, yeah,” I said with a shrug.

  Haragh and the women turned to look at my half-elf, who was now blushing to her roots while she stared at me with her lips parted in surprise. Then her big emerald eyes slowly began to glisten, and I realized she was tearing up as Shoshanne suddenly sniffed.

  “Are you guys about to cry?” I snorted.

  “It’s so sweet,” Shoshanne muttered. “You’ve nearly died here how many times? But Aurora’s worth it to you.”

  “You’re all worth it,” I clarified. “I love all of you. Everything about this world is amazing to me, and yeah, it sucks when I almost die or get eaten by plants or some crazy shit, but of course it’s worth it. I’m happier than I ever would have been in my last life. Every day is a challenge to be overcome, and I start each one knowing the women I love are at my side ready to kick ass with me and take no shit. What more could I ask for?”

  Now, Deya sniffed, too, and when I turned to Cayla in the hopes of sharing an eye roll, I found my stoic princess dabbing at the corner of her blue eyes as she hid her face from me.

  “Alright,” I sighed, “if this is gonna be a huge sappy deal, we’re moving on to other topics. Everyone’s on the same page about the Nemris thing, though, right?”

  Aurora, Cayla, and Shoshanne sniffed through a few nods of agreement, but Deya only sighed.

  “I know you would never lie to me, Mason,” the beautiful elf mumbled, “but I need some time to think over all of this. I am well aware Nemris led you to House Quyn, I have always felt this to be the case, but to say she physically pulled you out of some other world and brought you here through a hole in the sky … do you have any proof of this? Anything to show it’s certainly possible? Because I have lived all of my sixty-seven years under the goddess Nemris’ protection, and I cannot imagine this to be possible. It’s unheard of. The gods and goddesses do not interact with mortals in their physical forms. Only our spirits are capable of meeting.”

  “Well, we’ve met her in her physical form,” Cayla pointed out. “Aurora and I saw her standing right in the same room as us once, she even spoke to us for a little while. I can vouch for what Mason says. Including how gorgeous she is, if I’m being honest.”

  “Then have her come here now,” Shoshanne suggested. “Deya can see her deity in the flesh, and everything will be settled.”

  Aurora and Cayla raised their eyebrows in my direction, and I could tell all three of us were thinking the same thing. Of course, it would be convenient to have Nemris magically appear right then, but potentially problematic. I only wanted to be open with my women about my own past, but heading down the rabbit hole of Deya’s past was an entirely different thing.

  The truth was, having Nemris side by side with the beautiful elf would make it undeniably obvious the two were related, and that the pristine bloodline the elven nation valued Deya so highly for was in fact the bloodline of the goddess herself. They had the same mischievous smile, the same silvery laugh, and the pixie features of Deya’s face were a strangely similar version of the ancient goddess’.

  How could Nemris possibly show herself to Deya without opening the giant can of worms labeled, “One day, you will be a goddess, too. Try not to freak out?”

  I shook my head at the thought and tried to come up with a less revealing explanation, but luckily, Aurora was quicker than me.

  “He can’t just snap his fingers and have Nemris appear,” Aurora said as she rolled her eyes for good measure. “She’s a goddess, Shoshanne, not a servant. Mason does his best to do what’s right, and when it’s absolutely necessary, Nemris intercedes or appears. I think.”

  “It feels necessary right now,” Deya said as she looked at me.

  “Well, clearly it’s not, or she would be here,” Cayla said with a dismissive wave of her hand.

  Then I cleared my throat as I stood and gestured to the worktable. “Moving on, how are we doing on those darts?”

  Shoshanne blinked and glanced down at the table in front of her before she sent me a sheepish grin. “I only have seven finished. I’m sorry, I was a little distracted by the Nemris thing, and I’m not very good at assembly.”

  “What’s the assembly process?” Cayla asked curiously, and she strolled over to join Shoshanne at the worktable.

  “Raynor whittled all of the shafts for us already, but the feathers are so tiny, and they need to be glued into these miniscule holes, and then dart tips secured to the other end,” Shoshanne explained. “My fingers keep getting stuck together, though, and then the feathers are ruined so they won’t help stabilize the dart, and then I have to start all over with--”

  “Let me try,” Cayla cut in, and she gently nudged the healer out of her seat. “Focus on the tranquilizer, and I’ll have the darts finished for you within the hour.”

  “Are you sure you don’t mind?” Shoshanne asked. “It’s a lot of … woah. That was fast.”

  Cayla smirked and held up a completed dart while her other hand was already starting on the next, and I came over to leave a kiss on her porcelain cheek.

  “You’re amazing,” I murmured in Cayla’s ear.

  “I wasn’t sent here by a goddess,” the princess replied, “but I have my talents.”

  “You know,” Shoshanne mused, “when you put it like that, I feel like I should have known all along Mason wasn’t from this world. He’s clearly superior … in many categories. Almost mythically so.”

  The healer’s gaze drifted below my belt as she bit at the corner of her lower lip, and I immediately furrowed my brow.

  “To be clear, I am exactly the same as I was in my last life,” I clarified. “Head to toe Mason Flynt. Nemris only gave me my mage powers, alright? It’s not like she adjusted anything else about me. I just feel like that needs to be said.”

  Cayla chuckled as Shoshanne blushed coyly.

  “Well, in that case,” the princess muttered while she lined up four more finished darts, “I feel sorry for the women you left behind in your last realm. I’d probably end up worse than the Master if I had to go the rest of my life without your dic--”

  Haragh cleared his throat loudly, and when I looked over my shoulder, he sent me a pointed look and headed for the door.

  “I’ll be back in a bit,” I told my women. “Finish up the darts and get the tranquilizer distributed. We can take the snatcher out for a test run as soon as I get back.”

  Then I quickly left the atrium and headed into the lanes of Falmount Rift.

  I found Haragh fuming to himself as he paced the width of the lane that led to my house in the western woods, and when I approached him, he whipped around and took a swing right at my head with a giant green fist.

  “Dude!” I yelped as I ducked. “What the hell did I do?”

  “I’m just pissed!” he roared, and I tried not to smirk considering he was big enough to snap my arms off if he wanted to. “The ogres are done for, the Master’s got the jump on us, and you’re fucking goddesses and every gorgeous woman from here to Nalnora!”

  “Alright, that last one hardly seems relevant to the issue,” I muttered.

  “Oh, it’s fucking relevant!” Haragh growled as he picked up a boulder the size of his head and hurled it at a tree. “How many female ogres ye’ think there are in this world? No, let me say something more important first: they’re terrifying enough when they’re not possessed! Now, they’re all possessed and--”

  “We don’t know that,” I countered. “We don’t know anything yet. All we know is the Master has a giant fortress no one seems to have known about, and he’s packing it full of possessed mages and maybe some ogres.”

  My gut clenched as the full weight of the dilemma hit me like a wave all over again,
but I did my best to push through the discomfort and focus on the half-ogre who was practically foaming at the mouth.

  “Definitely ogres,” Haragh growled. “Your elf said so herself. She said she saw the ogres, and they were possessed, don’t deny it.”

  “Yes, she said that,” I agreed, “but we haven’t gotten into the details yet, so take a deep breath and calm down. Do you think I’m gonna shrug this off? Hell no, I’m not, but we need to be sensible and take this one thing at a time. I’ll go to Temin and--”

  “The king doesn’t give a shit about the ogres,” Haragh snapped. “He’ll be glad to be rid of them!”

  “Come on, Temin’s not a jerk.”

  “No, but he is the one who signed the emancipation fifteen years ago,” Haragh informed me. “Took him all of ten seconds to agree to the deal, and he washed his hands of us ever since. The ogres are on their own out there now, and Temin doesn’t want to deal with them. No one does.”

  “So, maybe he doesn’t want to deal with them,” I scoffed. “He’ll deal with me, won’t he? And I’m not letting this one go. There’s no way the Master’s getting away with branding all of your kin, Haragh, that’s just not something I’m gonna let happen.”

  “And if it’s already happened?” he challenged, and I caught a glint of fear in his furious brown eyes.

  “Then I’ve got a solution for that, too, don’t I?” I replied. “Well, I will once these darts are finished, but don’t worry, alright? We’ll fix this, trust me on that one.”

  Haragh took another few fuming breaths as he began pacing again, but then he came to a calmer stop in front of me. His voice was much less growly when he spoke again, and the few mages who had come out of their houses over the commotion seemed to be on the edges of their seats by this point.

  “Don’t know what you’ll do with a bunch of possessed ogres,” Haragh grumbled as he anxiously scratched his big green head. “You think I’m big, but you haven’t seen a full-fledged ogre before. Unless you have … are there ogres in that realm thingy of yours?”

  “No,” I chuckled, “but we probably shouldn’t discuss where I’m from in the middle of the street. It’d be cool if we kept this strictly need-to-know.”